I Owe You
by MadnessJones
Summary: Beast Wars. The Maximals find an ancient Autobot femme in stasis and revive her as a Maximal. She doesn't seem to be as loyal to them as her Autobot coding would dictate however, and she knows more about the Maximals' origins than she's willing to let on. Eventual Dinobot/OC pairing. Sequel to "You Will Care For Me" and "Custody Battle"
1. Still Alive

_Author's Notes: Hi everyone! Well, this is my very first Beast Wars fic. I binge watched the show so I could get in the right mindset to write this story, and I had honestly forgotten how much that show got away with. I think when they made Beast Wars the Canadian censorship board was taking a nap! LOL! Anyway, this is technically a sequel to one of my earlier G1 fics (You Will Care For Me), but I'm writing it in such a way so that newcomers will be able to follow the story (I hope). Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy the fic and please remember to leave a review :)_

* * *

Chapter 1

Still Alive

Rattrap, Airazor, and Tigatron had been sent to scout an area near the coast after the Alaxon's computer had detected a surge of energy that lasted for only a few seconds. That didn't make a lot of sense due to energon readings generally remaining constant throughout this area, so the working theory was that the surge was caused by a Predacon weapon.

Rattrap didn't like being the third wheel on this little search and retrieve mission. He noticed that Tigatron and Airazor had been getting chummy for a while now, and he was sure they were falling in love. That was something Rattrap would just as soon not be in the middle of. Pit, the only reason Tigatron had been by the base was to see Airazor. In Rattrap's humble opinion those two should just get a room and leave everybody else out of this mess.

At the moment Airazor was flying overhead to see if she could find anything, and Tigatron was keeping watch in case of Predacon attack. This wasn't the worst mission Rattrap had ever been on, but being with these two was too quiet. Dinobot might be a pain in the chassis, but at least Rattrap could have a decent conversation (argument) with him.

/Hey, can you hear me?/ Airazor asked over the comm since static was common in the area they were scouting.

/Yes, we can hear you,/ Tigatron replied, /What have you found?/

/Guys, you're going to want to get to the beach _now_ ,/ Airazor told them emphatically, /I'm not sure what this is exactly, but you have to see it to believe it./

The two Maximals wasted no time in running to where Airazor was waiting for them. She met them near the ocean, and beside her was a large grey frame and a smaller damaged frame.

"What the...?" Rattrap exclaimed; too stunned to say anything else.

The frame Airazor found was huge! It looked to be as big as the Autobot frames of old, and it had large prominent wings and spikes. It looked to be partially torn apart, and the smaller frame had many large chunks of it missing.

"What is this thing?" Airazor asked apprehensively.

"I'm not sure," Tigatron replied hesitantly.

"Yeah, well I am," Rattrap informed them, "That frame belongs to an ancient class of Cybertronian known as a seeker. They were jets that generally came in groups of 3. Of course there ain't no more livin' seekers. They all either died or were upgraded durin' the beginnin' of the Beast Age. Rhinox knows more about this slag than I do, so ask him."

"I will," Airazor replied even as she walked closer to the wreckage, "So, if this giant frame belongs to one of the ancients, then does that make this normal sized robot an ancient minibot?"

"Probably," Rattrap shrugged, "Yikes, I'll tell ya, that seeker is armed to the teeth and has a lot of close-combat spikes. Probably a Decepticon. We gotta get this thing outta here before the Preds try to salvage these frames for parts."

"Of course," Tigatron nodded in understanding, "We cannot allow those fiends to desecrate the corpses of our ancestors."

"Pfft...whatever," Rattrap snorted as he shook his head and went to grab one of the seeker's arms to pull it away from the tide.

Tigatron went to pick up the smaller bot. It was the same size as Rattrap's robot mode, but it looked so small and frail compared to its bulky seeker counterpart. It surprised Tigatron that the seeker was once capable of flight given how big and heavy it was up close. He silently mourned the loss of such a noble being, though he knew its death was likely centuries ago. As he went to pick up the small frame however, he noticed something beneath the surface and gasped!

"A spark!" Tigatron exclaimed in shock, "This Cybertronian still has a spark!"

"No way!" Rattrap shouted, "Lemme see!"

Rattrap and Airazor looked at it, and sure enough there was an exposed spark beneath the shattered chassis compartment. The minibot had been turned on its back so they had been unable to see the spark before, but now they knew that this ancient Cybertronian was clinging to life by a loose wire.

"It needs to turn into beast mode or it'll die from exposure to the energon!" Airazor cried out frantically.

"Oi, newsparks..." Rattrap muttered as he rubbed his forehead, "Airazor, it doesn't have a beast mode. It's an ancient! Ancients generally had vehicle or appliance modes. If it's gonna survive we have to get it back to base and quickly!"

"Give it to me," Airazor ordered, "I'll airlift the injured mech to safety."

Wasting no time, Rattrap gave the injured Cybertronian to Airazor and she quickly flew away with it. As she took off in the sky though, Rattrap remembered one more loose end from this scouting mission.

"Aw, great! Now you and me have to drag this rusted out carcass back to base!" Rattrap groused to Tigatron as he looked at the dead seeker frame.

Rattrap sighed miserably as the two mechs took hold of the seeker's wings and pulled it with them as they slowly made their way back to base. Rattrap just hoped the Predacons didn't show up to steal their prize. An ancient's body could have some obsolete but very effective weapons and parts for them to exploit.

* * *

It was three hours before Rattrap and Tigatron made it back to the Axalon. Fortunately there were no Predacons to inhibit their progress. Airazor had been on the Axalon for quite a while by the time the other two got back from hauling the scrapped body. Airazor managed to get the living ancient back in time and Rhinox examined it quickly to determine the best course of action.

"So, where's our patient?" Rattrap asked when he and Tigatron returned.

"Rhinox said the body was beyond repair, but the processor and spark were intact," Airazor informed them, "The only option left to save her was to put the spark and processor in a new protoform body and place her inside a restoration pod for reconstruction. Now it all depends on whether or not the memory log was damaged. I hope the ancient survives. Optimus theorizes that she might have come from an exploration team sent to recover something lost on this planet a long time ago. She could have also come through the same time anomaly as we did, though that is less likely since she was the style of protoform constructed during the age of the third Cybertronian war."

"Makes sense," Rattrap shrugged, but then after a moment asked, "Wait, _she_?"

"Um, yes. Is that important?" Airazor asked in confusion.

"Um, _yeah_!" Rattrap exclaimed as if it should be obvious, "That means it's probably a Decepticon! Most of the Autobot femmes were slagged durin' the war if they weren't powerful enough to fight off the 'Cons. It was millions of years before the femme population recovered, and by then most of 'em looked pretty different from the one we found."

"It is likely not a Decepticon," Tigatron contested, "That seeker we recovered had Autobot sigils on its wings."

Just then Rhinox walked over to them from the medbay with a pensive expression on his face. He looked exhausted from monitoring and adjusting the restoration pod's settings every few minutes to ensure a smooth rebuilding of their new _guest_.

"Any change?" Airazor asked worriedly.

"She will recover, but I...I had to change the protoform's core programming," Rhinox explained tiredly, "For one thing, she needed a body capable of acquiring a beast mode, so I had to outfit her with Maximal core programming."

"Eh, big deal," Rattrap replied dismissively, "She'll get used to it."

"Maybe, though I am not certain this femme is mentally prepared for the transition," Rhinox said hesitantly, "According to her spark signature, she is a sparkling."

"What's a sparkling?" Airazor asked curiously.

"Many vorns ago the Cybertronian spark was not capable of instantaneous maturation," Rhinox told them.

"Uh, and what does that mean to those of us that don't speak techno-babble?" Rattrap asked impatiently.

"It means Cybertronians used to go through a form of infancy, not unlike organics," Rhinox clarified, "Sparklings are baby Cybertronians, and it would often take them 4 or 5 vorns to be physically and mentally prepared for adult bodies. That all changed during the third Cybertronian war when Optimus Prime and Megatron built mechs with adult bodies for combat purposes. They couldn't afford to wait for sparklings to grow up since in a war zone that was unlikely to happen before the helpless beings were vaporized by the enemy. Nowadays Maximals and Predacons are born with adult bodies and processors, but that femme in the pod was in a sparkling frame when you found her."

"That was _a_ _baby_?" Airazor asked in disbelief, "But she was as big as Rattrap! How big did the ancients build themselves to be?"

"Big," Rhinox replied simply, "Now, this newcomer is in an adult frame due to reconstruction. She is somewhere between 3 to 4 vorns old, so she was close to being ready anyway. Still, we don't want to scare her. Wherever she came from, she is clearly not a Maximal and might not even know of our kind. She likely came through a temporal loop or was forced into stasis during an attack. Either scenario is likely given that her companion was dead."

"Do you think...? Airazor had trouble saying what she was thinking due to how awful the thought was, but finally she said, "Do you think that the seeker was her creator?"

"Probably," Rhinox replied solemnly, "Whatever happened to that sparkling, she is a Maximal now. She will need our protection if we are to keep her out of Predacon hands. We will also need to arrange quarters for her...whoever she is."

"Oh man, oh man! The situations we get into!" Rattrap rubbed his hands anxiously, "I just hope Optimus knows what to do about this. I _do_ _not_ wanna share a room with a million year old baby!"

* * *

She felt dizzy as her processor slowly regained consciousness. She expected to be in the Matrix, the eternal smelting pit, or simply to cease existing. She knew she shouldn't still be alive, not after that explosion...

It had all started in the Gregorian year 2000 aboard the Nemesis. Little Terrabyte had snuck aboard the ship with her two best friends, adult formers named Honey Venom and Quantum Boom, in order to kill Megatron and Starscream. Honey Venom had a personal vendetta against Starscream since he had killed her adoptive father and mentor, Skyfire. Terrabyte had no personal qualm with the Decepticons, but Honey Venom was her best friend so therefore loyalty dictated she accompany her on this ill-planned road trip of revenge.

It had ended about as well as Terrabyte assumed it would. Megatron set the Nemesis to explode and had trapped Honey Venom under a support beam. Terrabyte tried to stay by her friend's side, but Q-Boom had cut off her left servo to dislodge her from Honey Venom and flew her away. They never made it out of the ship, however. The explosion caught them, and the last thing Terrabyte remembered was intense heat and pain. It happened so quickly that Q-Boom didn't even scream.

That should have been the end of her existence. The little femme knew she should be dead, yet she could feel her body and spark. She was clearly alive, but there was an emptiness inside of her. She couldn't feel the sparks of any of her family members or the loyalty bond that kept her bound to Honey Venom like a knight to a king. There was nothing inside of her except herself, and that terrified her.

She opened her optics to find she was in a small containment unit surrounded by an unknown chemical substance. Her optics widened in primal fear and she tried to kick and punch at the walls to get the slag out of there!

Optimus Primal was at the console in his beast form when he heard the soft pounding coming from inside the CR chamber. He got up from what he was doing so he could release the new Maximal, and he only hoped this one wasn't as crazy and/or unpleasant to work with as some of his other colleagues.

He entered the code and the CR chamber opened. The femme that had been desperately trying to escape a moment ago looked at Optimus Primal and immediately stopped moving. She placed her arms at her side stiffly and stared at the big ape.

Terrabyte didn't know what to make of this situation. There was an adorable ape standing in front of her. Was this the afterlife? Her caretaker would have never allowed animals aboard the Ark. He hated it when animals shed their fur and skin. After her premature death had she been deemed worthy to have a pet of her very own at last?

Her thoughts were cut short when she saw a large rodent, a cheetah, and a rhino enter the room. Then the gorilla transformed into a mech! Terrabyte shook her helm and rubbed her optics in disbelief, but no one seemed to notice her do that.

"Hey Big Bot," Cheetor greeted Optimus warmly, "Oh, I see our new friend is awake. Hey there compadre, I'm Cheetor. What's your name?"

She didn't reply, but rather just stared at the peppy beast machine.

"Her left servo is missing," Rhinox noted, "I was afraid of this. Her processor must have logged the damage before she went into stasis lock."

"So?" Rattrap asked, "Shouldn't the CR chamber just make her another one?"

"Not with technology this old," Rhinox lamented, "This femme is an ancient. They are not one hundred percent compatible with our current technology. If she is to have a new hand, I will need to make her one from scratch."

So, this was the future, she assumed from his words. Well, judging from the barren organic landscape in the window, she figured this must be a ship that explores beyond the reaches of Cybertron...if there was even anything left of Cybertron.

The elevator that led to the bridge lifted up and opened a few seconds later, and another robot appeared. This one was blue and adorned with brown scales. Terrabyte took a look at first the newcomer and then the ape-bot. They both had red optics. Red meant Decepticon. Then again they were animals. Wait, did that mean... _it worked_?

"Optimus, I am finished loading the body into the cargo bay," Dinobot announced after he stepped out of the elevator, "I scanned the weapons systems, and they seem to coincide with a combination of late Autobot and early Predacon technology. It is impossible to determine this seeker's former allegiance."

"Heh, sounds familiar," Rattrap quipped as he stared Dinobot right in the optic.

Optimus noticed that the femme was staring up at him now, and her yellow optics were focusing on him with an intensity that was almost uncomfortable.

"Why you good for nothing rodent!" Dinobot snapped at Rattrap.

"Eh, go stomp on a daisy, Chopperface," Rattrap waved him away dismissively.

"Why I oughtta!" Dinobot tried to throttle Rattrap, but Rhinox transformed and held him back.

"Knock it off!" Rhinox shouted more forcefully than normal, "The seeker to which you are referring was most likely someone important to our new Maximal, and we should give her time to grieve."

Maximal? Optimus? Yes, it was true! The Maximal project had been successful, and now Terrabyte was in the care of the next generation of Cybertronian. Their red optics did not mean Decepticon. That was just the preferred optic color of the creator of the Maximal project, and now Terrabyte knew enough about what was going on to have an advantage in case something went wrong.

"Grieving or not, she hasn't scanned a beast mode yet," Optimus pointed out, "Are you recovered enough to endure a beast mode transformation?"

The femme did not reply to Optimus, but instead walked past him to their computer.

"Hey, get away from that!" Dinobot snapped as he stepped in front of her and growled challengingly, "Are you or are you not a Maximal? You may not use our computers until we know where you stand."

She looked up at Dinobot's red optics, and then stared at his spinning sword. This wasn't the intent of the Maximal project. Their creator would have never made a Dinobot. Only mammals and birds were considered worthy enough creatures for the Maximal design. Reptiles and insects were strictly deemed inferior. So, what was this mech?

"Can you talk, little one?" Rhinox asked her in a gentle tone of voice, "My name is Rhinox. That is Optimus Primal, our leader. That is Rattrap, and you already know Cheetor. And this hothead is Dinobot."

Dinobot snorted derisively at how he was introduced, and Terrabyte couldn't help but think that his designation was the least creative thing she had heard. That would be like if a car-former named themselves Car. That thought actually caused her to smile, and Dinobot cocked a brow ridge when he realized she was smiling up at him.

"Come along, little one," Rhinox urged her toward the computer console, "If you want to scan for your own life forms then you can. Just don't touch anything else, okay? This is very sensitive equipment."

"Why are you talking to her like that?" Dinobot asked, "Warriors are not coddled!"

"She ain't a warrior yet, Dino-breath," Rattrap retorted, "Apparently she has the processor of a toddler or somethin'."

"So do you, but I don't talk baby talk to you," Dinobot replied witheringly.

Rattrap and Dinobot continued to trade barbs while Rhinox showed the new femme the scanner. She seemed fascinated by the computer console, as if she had never seen anything like it before. He turned the scanner on and several animals appeared on screen.

"These are the animals in our immediate area," Rhinox informed her, "Pick whichever one you like."

Rhinox watched as the white femme scanned the computer screen with her delicate index digit. She passed over the saber tooth tiger, the falcon, and the buffalo. She seemed to consider the frog, but thought better of it. Finally, after several minutes of searching she landed on the animal she wanted and pressed the activate button. Her body contorted until her beast made was revealed; a white kangaroo.

"Ah man, I was hoping she'd pick a cat," Cheetor whined.

"A kangaroo?" Dinobot asked flatly as he stared at the new beast in exasperation, "This beast form is useless!"

"Dinobot..." Optimus chided him.

" _No_! Look at her! She is a fuzzy hopping animal with a pouch!" Dinobot shouted as he gestured to her with his claws, "The Predacons are not going to look at her and say 'Run for your lives! It's the _kangaroo_!'."

Rhinox expected Dinobot's outburst to hurt the poor femme's feelings, but the reaction it actually got surprised him. The femme was grinning at Dinobot! She looked like she was amused by his tirade rather than frightened, and that made Rhinox chuckle.

"I know this is a big shock for you, for all of this," Optimus said to the femme, "I hate to admit this to you, but we are in the middle of a war with Megatron and his Predacons. Our survival and the survival of countless others depends on our winning the Beast War. Now that you are a Maximal, we will likely call on you to fight. I hope you understand."

The femme didn't reply to him, and Optimus wondered how much of this was even getting through. She didn't seem too keen on talking with them, if she even could, and they didn't even know her name.

"Rattrap, show her to a room she can stay in," Optimus ordered, "We'll talk more later, miss. I hope you recharge peacefully tonight."

 _Recharge peacefully._ Terrabyte wanted to laugh. She hadn't recharged peacefully in nearly two vorns, and she was only three vorns old. She just hoped if she had a night terror it would be someplace where no one would hear her scream.


	2. The Silent Treatment

_Author's Notes: First of all, Holy Toledo! This is the first fanfic I've ever written that's been featured in a community here on FF, and it's a sequel to a story that already had a sequel! Wow! This is so cool! Sorry if I'm geeking out, but I just didn't think it would ever happen. Glad to know there are enough Beast Wars fans out there to warrant continuing with this story, and I'll do my best to keep everyone in character while adding something new :)_

 _Anyway, this chapter is important for building up the story in later chapters, but I admit that there isn't really any action in this scene. Given that it's a Beast Wars fic however you can bet there will be lots of action and conflict in future chapters. Thank you guys so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy this chapter of "I Owe You" :)_

* * *

Chapter 2

The Silent Treatment

Airazor had taken the new femme out for some fresh air and to explore the Maximals' territory while the others researched their visitor on Sentinel to try to figure out who or what they were dealing with. They examined many femmes and femmelings from the time period they were stuck in and from generations before just in case, but so far they had no luck in finding her.

"Does that look like her?" Rattrap asked Rhinox as he pointed to a car-former on the screen.

"No, Rattrap. That femme is currently an adult," Rhinox sighed as he rubbed his forehead; tired from over an hour of trying to locate their new guest in the historical database, "If only we knew what her frame type had been. Maybe then we would know something."

"Why do you think she's mute?" Cheetor asked; mildly concerned for her.

"We don't know that she _is_ mute," Optimus pointed out, "All we know is that she won't speak to us. She could just be scared."

"Or hiding something," Dinobot added suspiciously, "For all we know she could be a spy sent to infiltrate our base. The whole ancient thing could merely be a ploy."

"Hey, you weren't there Chopperface!" Rattrap snapped; affronted for his own sake as much as the femme's, "I saw her! That femme wasn't even recognizable as a femme! She didn't even look alive! I thought we'd already lost her. I'm tellin' ya, she ain't no spy."

"I agree, though I also agree with Dinobot that there may be risks involved in prolonged contact with her," Optimus said gravely, "This femme is clearly a product of this time period. Our continued interaction with her might upset the time stream. We need to know who she is before we can know how to proceed."

"Well, we've eliminated Elita One's squadron and the Spark Stoppers of Kaon," Rhinox reminded them, "We know what she isn't, but we don't know what she is. Frankly, all we know for a fact is that she was accompanied by an Autobot seeker with Predacon upgrades. We could be talking about a treason situation."

"Yeah, but for which side?" Cheetor asked, "It could be an Autobot defecting to the 'Cons in exchange for upgrades, or it could be a former Pred switching sides to protect the sparkling. It could be anything!"

"Hey, what about this one?" Rattrap asked as he showed a picture of a white and black carrier host femme.

"Hm, Zetabyte," Rhinox read off the screen, "A singer from Polyhex that joined the Decepticons after most of the carrier host population was assassinated by Megatron's seeker forces. The historical records have proven that she was a close friend of Soundwave and aided in gathering information for Megatron. She was partly responsible for the deaths of all those innocent hosts due to her sabotage. She was killed by the Autobot warrior Sunstreaker after she and her bondmate Tug tried to flee a recently reclaimed area of Autobot territory."

"So, is this her?" Rattrap asked impatiently.

"While I admit her look is similar, the timeline doesn't add up," Rhinox told him, "Zetabyte would be an adult in this time period, assuming she isn't already dead. Carrier host might be a good candidate for the femme's former frame type though."

The elevator lifted up in that moment and Airazor came in with the kangaroo femme. Airazor looked happy and carefree, but her companion showed no expression on her face plate.

"Fun trip?" Cheetor asked playfully.

"Yeah, I showed her where Tigatron patrols up north," Airazor informed them, "Then we had a picnic, and I showed her how to eat organic matter. She seems to love the little red berries that grow near the lake in Grid Delta."

"So she still ain't sayin' nothin', huh?" Rattrap scoffed, "Figures. You know kid, we wanna help you, but you gotta help yourself first. Maybe start by tellin' us your designation, and maybe let us know who the cadaver is we got in the cargo hold downstairs."

The femme tilted her helm at Rattrap for a second, and then swiftly turned around and got back on the elevator.

"Hey wait!" Rattrap yelled, "You can't go out there alone! Come back!"

Rattrap and Airazor had to wait for the elevator, and then they ordered it to return to its last stop. They went down fearing the femme was trying to escape, only to find that they were in the cargo bay. The femme had come down to see the body.

Airazor suddenly felt like an intruder as she saw that the kangaroo femme was next to the seeker's corpse; tenderly touching its mangled wings and tracing the cracked glass of the cockpit. Rattrap, not having Airazor's social graces, walked up to where the kangaroo was standing and looking up at the grey shell.

"Hey listen, I know you must feel bad about all this, but hangin' onto the past ain't gonna get you nowhere," Rattrap feebly tried to comfort the femme, "You're gonna be alright, trust me. We'll win the Beast Wars and then be on our way back to Cybertron. I don't know what part you're from, but personally I'm lookin' forward to goin' back to Iacon. That's where the action is baby! Bright lights and the big city! Maybe when you get used to things I could show you this little dive I know that serves some of the best Krilayan booze you've ever tasted."

The femme was staring at Rattrap, so he kept talking, but he didn't know if she was really listening or just staring at him for being an idiot. So far she hadn't shown much range of emotion or ability to comprehend. He wondered if maybe her processor had been damaged by whatever hurt her, but he didn't want to give up just yet.

"Say, uh, you never told me where you're from kid," Rattrap not-so-subtly pointed out, "Come on, you can trust ol' Rattrap. Where ya from? Maybe we know some of the same people."

"Rattrap, come on," Airazor sighed as she shook his shoulder guard, "Can't you see she needs a moment to herself? She's still grieving. This seeker was obviously someone important to her. Let's go back up to the bridge, and she can come find us when she's ready."

"Yeah, alright," Rattrap reluctantly agreed, "I just don't think it's healthy to keep everythin' bottled up inside. Talkin' can help."

"Is that why you never shut up?" Airazor teased him.

"Eh, go tell it to your boyfriend Tigatron," Rattrap groused as they made their way to the elevator.

Airazor and Rattrap got on the elevator, and Airazor took one last look through the yellow glass at the kangaroo as she hopped into the glass-riddled cockpit of the dead seeker and settled into one of the dried-out seats. Airazor only hoped that whatever event had sparked this didn't scar the poor creature for life.

* * *

Terrabyte watched as the Maximals named Airazor and Rattrap ascended back up to the bridge. She sighed as she situated herself in the worn seat at the front of the cockpit; deciding she would rather sleep here instead of in the guest quarters tonight. She knew this frame was no longer her old friend, but it still made her feel safe to be here.

Terrabyte wasn't used to being the center of attention like this. One of her few precious talents had always been the ability to blend into a crowd so well that no one noticed her. She used that talent to spy for her former orphan gang, the Sigma Sisters, and she had hoped to use that talent to learn more about the Maximals. It wasn't working though. No matter how quiet she was or how careful her movements they never took their optics off her. It was like she was an oddity at a side show or a newly discovered species of animal.

The real problem was communication. To most mechs and femmes communication was the easiest and most logical way to solve most problems. Terrabyte, however, had trouble with simply approaching another Cybertronian and just talking to them. Her spark would constrict in her chassis and her intakes felt like they were filling up with gunk. Her joints would freeze and she would stand stock still. Talking to others filled Terrabyte with a type of phobic dread that didn't really make any sense, but her body reacted as if it were a physical condition.

When she first arrived at the Ark in the year 2000 AD it had made sense for her to be afraid. The Autobots were an unknown entity, her voice was damaged and annoying, and she had three cassette symbiotes to worry about. None of those things were true now. She was alone, her voice was fine, and she knew what the Maximals were and were not capable of. So, why was this so hard?

She needed answers. She needed to know what time period this was and whether or not anyone she cared about was still alive. Q-Boom's spark could have yet survived that explosion even though her empty body was currently surrounding Terrabyte. Honey Venom might have been rescued from her watery grave. Phobia might be an adult by now, maybe have a family of her own like she always wanted. Maybe Sunstreaker and Sideswipe would welcome her home, even though she was a kangaroo. Maybe her symbiotes were still with Blaster. So many questions she needed answers to.

Terrabyte struggled to control her intakes. She inhaled and exhaled several times before she trusted that she could indeed cycle air without locking up. She grabbed a piece of glass and looked at her reflection. She looked weird. She had long ears on top of her helm, and despite having only one robotic servo left she had two animal paws jutting out from her wrists. Her optics, however, had not changed. They were wide, yellow, and haunted by the stellar cycles of neglect and abuse.

Sunstreaker was the only caregiver she ever had that truly loved her as her parents did, and she missed him so much. Despite how terrifying she had found him at first, he actually understood her stubbornness and antisocial nature better than most. Forming a guardian spark bond with him had actually been one of the smartest things she had ever done, because it meant she didn't have to struggle to communicate. They knew each other's feelings immediately, and it made her life so much easier.

Terrabyte wanted her old life back, away from the future and the Maximals. She would find her way home. Not even time and space would stop her from returning to the family and friends she loved.

* * *

Optimus Primal was scanning the grid monitor for Predacon activity when he suddenly had the feeling he was being watched. He was sure Rattrap was trying to sneak up and scare him again, or maybe Cheetor. Those young mechs never seemed to get tired of trying to prank Optimus in their off time.

"Alright, I know you're back there," Optimus announced sternly, "It isn't going to work this time. You might as well come on out."

Optimus swiveled in his chair to see who he would find, and he saw that the kangaroo femme was standing beside a console staring at him intently. He tried for a friendly smile in the hopes of putting her at ease, but the truth was he was the one who needed the tension from the air to fade away. Her stare seemed to penetrate his armor and bore into his very spark.

"So...You ever seen a perimeter grid before?" Optimus asked casually in an effort to be polite.

No answer.

"Well then, why don't you come over here and I'll show you how it works," Optimus invited her warmly despite how unsettled he felt by her lack of feedback.

She walked over to where he was without protest, and he began to show her the buttons required to make the grid function and how to read the grid.

"Now here is the grid monitor. These yellow lines are our territory, and these red lines are Predacon territory," Optimus explained patiently; feeling better now that she was looking at the equipment, "This big yellow dot is us, and this little yellow dot in the upper right corner is Tigatron. If there were Predacons in our territory, they would show up as red flashing dots. Understand so far?"

"Altihex."

The word was so abruptly and softly spoken that at first Optimus thought he had imagined it. He looked back at the femme, and she looked back at him.

"Excuse me?" Optimus asked just in case he wasn't hearing things.

"Rattrap asked me where I am from," Terrabyte replied in a soft monotone, "I am from Altihex."

"Um...okay," Optimus replied; unsure how else to respond, "So...May I know your name?"

Terrabyte tried to think of something to say. She didn't want to give the Maximals her real designation. She didn't know whether they favored Autobot or Decepticon ideology, but either way she had a record. She was a born and bred Decepticon, but she tried to kill Megatron. Either way she knew it would be unwise to tell them who she really was. But what name would be best suited for the situation?

"It's alright," Optimus sighed in defeat, "You can tell me when you're ready."

"Bitten," Terrabyte suddenly said before she fully thought through her idea.

"Bitten? Is that your name?" Optimus asked for clarification.

"Yes...my name is Bitten," Terrabyte replied hesitantly.

Optimus accepted it without further questions, and Terrabyte felt temporary relief. She chose the name due to a phrase she had learned on earth that seemed to fit her life: _Once bitten, twice shy._


	3. Debt Enclosed

_Author's Notes: Sorry this chapter took so long, everyone. I've been working on it for a while now, but I'm still not completely satisfied with it. Despite that however, I didn't want to waste any more time keeping you all waiting, so I'm posting the chapter finally. Hopefully it turned out okay, and hopefully my future chapters will be even better. Please review if you feel like it. Hope you guys all have a great week :)_

* * *

Chapter 3

Debt Enclosed

It was a starry night out, and most of the Maximals were in recharge. Dinobot had just been relieved of duty by Rhinox and was currently stalking the halls of the Axalon before turning in just to make sure there were no threats he missed. Living among Megatron and his fellow Predacons had taught Dinobot to never let his guard down lest he find himself on the wrong end of a projectile weapon.

As Dinobot turned the corner where the crew quarters were, he suddenly heard an audial-piercing scream! He knew it was a feminine scream, and it was coming from the right side of the hallway. Bitten's room.

Dinobot charged into the room to fight off whatever was harming Bitten, only to find the kangaroo femme was still in recharge even as she continued to scream. Apparently she was having a nightmare. Dinobot walked over to the berth and began to shake Bitten in an attempt to wake her.

"Hey! Online! You're going to wake up the whole ship!" Dinobot snarled as he shook her by the shoulders.

Bitten's yellow optics burst open and she saw that a threatening looking mech with jagged teeth and red optics was right in her face plate. She wasn't fully awake yet and feared that she was being attacked.

Bitten screamed at Dinobot, but this wasn't a normal scream. This was her sonic attack, and Dinobot was forced to release Bitten when his entire frame convulsed and became paralyzed. He sparked on the ground, barely conscious, and Bitten finally awakened enough to remember where she was and who Dinobot was.

"Oh no..." Bitten softly warbled as she took in the sight of her not-attacker.

Bitten, fearing she might've killed him, picked up Dinobot and rushed him to the CR chamber. It wasn't an easy feat for her since Dinobot was very heavy and she only had one servo, but she managed to carry him down the hall, onto the bridge, and into the CR chamber. She sat beside the chamber and clenched her fist in worry. She had been dreaming she was being attacked by an orphan gang back in Altihex, and never meant to harm one of her rescuers.

She knew she would have to find some way to make this up to him.

* * *

A few hours later Rattrap was strolling down the hall toward where the food stores were kept. He was in the mood for some cheese whiz and moldy bread, and thought that early morning would be a good time. After all, he didn't feel like waiting in line behind all the other jerks that would just hog all the food anyway.

As he entered the room he saw that he wasn't alone. Bitten was already up and appeared to be crushing something with a mallet. Considering the food stores consisted of dehydrated slop and tube food, Rattrap was both confused and nervous by her actions.

"Hey uh, Bitten. Whatcha up to?" Rattrap asked; trying to sound casual but still kind of freaked out by the mostly silent femme, "It's um, a beautiful day to, uh, hit stuff with hammers, am I right?"

"I am tenderizing a steak," Bitten explained; surprising Rattrap since she rarely spoke to anyone.

"Oh? Where'd you get a steak?" Rattrap asked; his hunger and curiosity overriding his caution.

"I found a dead saber tooth tiger," Bitten replied without inflection, "I am making breakfast for...what was his name? Oh yes, _Dinobot_."

"You're makin' food for Lizard Lips?" Rattrap asked derisively, "Why?"

"I owe him," Bitten replied as if that explained everything.

"Oh. So...can I have some?" Rattrap asked hopefully.

Bitten did not reply. She merely stopped tenderizing the meat and started spicing. Rattrap, feeling dissed, harrumphed as he walked past her to get his cheese whiz. If Bitten felt insulted by this, she never showed any indication of it.

After Rattrap left Bitten finished spicing the steak and then added a glass of water to the tray before heading for Dinobot's quarters. It was still strange to her that Cybertronians had developed beyond the need for energon. If someone had told her that someday Cybertronians would become beings of pure energy, even that would've been more plausible than this. She suspected the Insecticons were the ones that invented this type of organic matter absorbing frame. She made a note to herself to ask someone later.

When she knocked on the door using her handless paw it took a few moments before Dinobot answered. He had spent all night in the CR chamber, and apparently wasn't too happy about it if the scowl he gave Bitten upon seeing her was any indication. He was in Dino-mode, so his discontent made him look even more threatening than usual. Bitten entered the room uninvited and placed the tray with the raw steak and water on his bedside table.

"What is the meaning of this?" Dinobot asked in confusion.

"I owe you," Bitten replied stoically, "I apologize for nearly killing you while I was in recharge. I will repay you."

"Where did you get a steak?" Dinobot asked as he sniffed the offered food.

"A dead saber tooth tiger," Bitten replied as she had replied to Rattrap, "Do you need anything else?"

"No," Dinobot replied, "Also, you have good reflexes. If an intruder had been in my quarters I would have attempted to kill them as well."

"That makes no difference," Bitten stated, "I still owe you, and I will repay you."

"This wasn't the repayment?" Dinobot asked; a little annoyed that she wasn't leaving.

"No, this is only the beginning," Bitten replied, and Dinobot began to understand this wasn't so much a reward as a punishment, "I will stay by your side and make your life easier until my debt to you has been repaid."

Bitten then left the room, but Dinobot could still hear her soft intakes from outside his door. He groaned longsufferingly at his plight. First they get stuck with an ancient Autobot, then she nearly kills him, and now she was going to follow him around like a lost puppy! This just wasn't fair!

* * *

The next few days were very tiresome for Dinobot. He tried with every fiber of his being to convince Bitten that her debt was repaid and she could leave him alone now, but all that did was cause her to restate that she still owed him and to continue doing everything for him. She would prepare his meals, clean his quarters, check the perimeter before he entered a room, and stand close to him all day. He was starting to feel smothered and a little uncomfortable with how much she did for him.

Rattrap of course was jealous. He didn't see why Dinobot got such preferential treatment when Rattrap Tigatron and Airazor were the ones that saved the femme's life. Also she gave that stinking lizard free food! If it was one thing Rattrap hated more than Dinobot getting all the attention, it was being passed over for free food.

"How did you do it?" Rattrap finally asked Dinobot while they were on monitor duty together, "How did you get that femme to make you steak and clean your berth? I can't even get a femme's comm digits without buyin' dinner first, but you don't have to do anythin'! What's your secret?"

"I nearly died," Dinobot growled lowly, "Frankly you're the lucky one, _rodent_. Bitten is always lurking around. I wouldn't be surprised if she's listening to us right now. She is always in my way, and...and...she won't stop _staring_ at me!"

"Dinobutt, I hate to break your little bubble of self-importance, but she stares at everybody," Rattrap replied with a smirk.

"I know, and it's irritating!" Dinobot shouted in exasperation, "How do I convince her that her debt is repaid? What will it take to get her to _leave me alone_!?"

"I could buy your debt," Rattrap suggested impishly, "Then you get your privacy back and I get free steak. I just hope she'll cook mine. I may be an animal, but I still have standards."

Dinobot just scowled at Rattrap, who continued to look at him with an amused expression. The moment was interrupted by the predictable entrance of Bitten on the elevator.

"Dinobot," Bitten called out in a soft tone of voice, "Optimus Primal sent me to find you. He says it is time to patrol the parameter. I will go with you."

"That isn't necessary, or welcomed," Dinobot snarled as he stood up and transformed into beast mode.

"I am going with you," Bitten repeated with finality as she transformed into kangaroo mode.

Dinobot sulked while trying not to look like he was sulking, and Rattrap snickered with his servo over his mouth as the two of them retreated.

"Have fun with your stalker, Dino-breath!" Rattrap called out just before the elevator went down, and the last thing he saw was Dinobot's middle digit held high in the air like a proclamation.

* * *

They had been walking for two hours around Maximal territory. Dinobot and Bitten had not spoken to each other the entire time, which seemed to suit them both just fine. Dinobot didn't want to be in Bitten's company, and Bitten didn't seem to enjoy intelligent conversation anyway.

They came to a cliff that overlooked a river, and they started walking along it together. There was room to walk, but at the same time the dizzying height was still visible. Dinobot went on for about a minute before he realized that Bitten had not followed him. He turned around and saw that she was staring down at the river below. He huffed out a sigh and trudged back over to where she was.

"Don't tell me you're afraid of heights," Dinobot snapped when he got close enough to her.

She didn't acknowledge him, but rather just kept looking down below them. Dinobot was getting tired of this. She wouldn't speak, she wouldn't move, and he couldn't complete his patrol without her because the inexperienced femme might get herself killed out in the wilderness alone.

"Bitten, get moving! That is an order!" Dinobot barked at her.

Finally she turned to look up at him, and then placidly replied with "Yes, Dinobot."

They continued to walk for a few more minutes in silence. Dinobot was still feeling short with her but at the same time he realized that she wasn't really doing anything wrong. Part of him wanted to apologize, but an even bigger part of him wished she would apologize to him for wasting his time. Finally the silence was starting to be too much for Dinobot, so he decided to try to talk to her.

"Bitten, why did you stop by the river?" Dinobot asked for lack of anything better to say.

"The sun hitting the water makes it sparkle," Bitten replied, and Dinobot rolled his optics at her, "Do you get to see this every day?"

"Of course I do!" Dinobot snapped, "It's water! Everybody on planet earth has seen water! Even people on other planets are aware of the concept of water! It's not special!"

"Then you haven't actually seen it," Bitten contested, "If you stopped, and if you looked, you would see a light show that the brightest city on Cybertron cannot compete with. Earth is a strange planet, but beautiful in its own way. You walk by here every day, yet you've never seen it. That's kind of sad, really."

"I think that's the most you've ever said to me," Dinobot commented, "You sound a lot like Rhinox. He's into this whole nature nonsense as well."

"I think he was based off of Hound," Bitten remarked as she ran her servo over the cliff rocks as she walked.

"No, he's not a hound, he's a rhino," Dinobot corrected her, not knowing what she meant.

"You are not a Maximal, are you?" Bitten asked point blank, "You do not look like a Maximal, because you are a reptile. What are you?"

"I was sparked a Predacon," Dinobot declared with pride, "I come from a long line of conquerors dating all the way back to the Decepticons. You know, we never learned of your allegiance. Which side were you from? Which side were your parents from? I assure you that whatever your answer I will keep it in confidence."

"No," Bitten replied bluntly, "I already owe you. If you kept one of my secrets, then I might never get out of your debt."

Just as Dinobot was about to reply, he heard a whining noise in the air and reflexively pushed himself and Bitten out of the way before a Predacon missile exploded where they had been standing! He growled and looked above them to see Waspinator and Terrorsaur flying overhead.

"Predacons!" Dinobot spat angrily, "Bitten, it's time to see if you can fight. Dinobot, Maximize!"

"Bitten, Maximize," Bitten intoned in a much softer voice than Dinobot used.

"Maximalz are going down!" Waspinator declared, "Wazzpinator, Terrorize!"

"Rawk! Terrorsaur, Terrorize!" Terrorsaur squawked as he shifted into his robot mode.

With those words the battle began in earnest. Waspinator shot with his laser pistol and Terrorsaur shot at them with a new missile launcher that Tarantulas had built for the occasion. Dinobot returned fire with his green optic lasers, but Bitten just stood there for a moment mesmerized by the spectacle. It wasn't that she was afraid, but something about one of the Predacons caught her off guard.

 _That wasp.._. Bitten thought ruefully. _That is Q-Boom's offspring. She drew that design when she was a sparkling. Wait, that means she survived. She survived long enough to have a sparkling that became a Predacon. I wonder how that happened..._

"Bitten!" Dinobot bellowed; jolting her out of her reverie, "Stop standing there like a rock and attack!"

Bitten didn't want to attack the Predacons now that she knew the Sigma Sisters were likely aligned with them, but she owed Dinobot for what she did to him. Steeling herself and hoping she aimed well, she let out a screech attack in Terrorsaur's direction but made sure to not hit Waspinator.

The attack did its job and Terrorsaur was instantly knocked out and fell to the ground. Waspinator flew down and grabbed him while Dinobot continued trying to shoot him out of the sky. The Predacons retreated into the distance, and Dinobot and Bitten transformed back into their animal modes.

"Your timing is terrible," Dinobot grumbled.

"I apologize," Bitten replied without explanation.

"Your power is quite useful," Dinobot begrudgingly commended, "Your aim was off though. If you had attacked his processor he would be dead now. You will need training if you are to become an efficient Predacon destroyer."

"You want them destroyed?" Bitten asked in confusion, "But they are the same as you."

"No, these Predacons follow Megatron," Dinobot growled in disgust, "A true Predacon knows the meaning of honor. Besides, Megatron failed us and sent us to the wrong planet. He does not deserve to call himself a leader. Primal may have a strange method to his command, but he is at least worthy of my respect."

Bitten nodded and followed Dinobot back to base without another word. She didn't understand this Maximal, or Predacon, or whatever he was. Then again, how could she judge him, when she had also abandoned the faction of her birth in favor of those she cared about? Whatever his reasons, Bitten still decided to trust him for the moment. If he betrayed her however, she would never allow him close to her again.


	4. Carriers

_Author's Notes: For some reason I suddenly felt inspired to write in this fic again. I don't know how long the feeling will last, but I hope it lasts for a while. The Sigma Sisters, including Terrabyte/Bitten, are among my favorite OCs. Interesting aside, chapter 4 of "You Will Care For Me" is also titled "Carriers". Thank you to everyone who is reading this story, and I hope you enjoy this chapter of "I Owe You" :)_

* * *

Chapter 4

Carriers

The Predacons went about their duties while Megatron planned his next move against the Maximals. There was an uneasiness in the air as every Predacon was aware of Megatron's currently foul mood. Every step seemed a little softer, and every flap of wings seemed a bit more careful. No one wanted Megatron to notice them today since he was looking for an excuse to destroy something.

With this in mind Waspinator sat alone in his room. He was supposed to be outside on patrol, but Megatron was out there pacing back and forth heatedly and Waspinator didn't want to run into him again. He just hoped the purple T-Rex was too preoccupied to notice his absence.

"Wazzpinator wishez he could quit thiz job," Waspinator muttered irritably, but then realized there might be listening devices in his room, so he quickly rescinded by saying, "Uh, well, maybe not quit. Wazzpinator lovez Predaconz! Never wantz to leave!"

Waspinator waited to see if anyone was coming in to punish him, and when he didn't hear anything he sighed in relief. Not knowing what else to do while he rode out the storm that was Hurricane Megatron, he decided to lazily surf around on his computer. There was no access to an information network, so Waspinator had to be content with playing a few games of pinball and checking his emails. Yeah right, the only emails he ever got was notes from Megatron informing him of his next humiliating assignment. He was really starting to dislike his job.

Waspinator saw that he had an email that was from an unknown address, and since no one had ever educated him on the concept of spam he decided to open it.

 _To: Waspinator_

 _Subject: Dead Frame Pickup_

 _Hello, Waspinator. Recently the Maximals have come into possession of a used seeker frame from the end of the Third War Era. I have discovered that you are the closest descendant of the former inhabitant of this frame, as you were the son of the dead seeker, subject name Quantum Boom. I feel that since you are her son then this frame rightfully belongs to you. I will be at the following coordinates with the frame, and I expect to meet with you there at 19:00._

 _Bitten_

"Bitten? Who iz that?" Waspinator asked himself in confusion, "Whoever he iz, he'z crazzy. Wazzpinator haz no carrier."

Then he looked at his internal chronometer, and realized that the alleged meeting was only 45 minutes away. He thought for a moment about what he should do. On the one servo this could all be a trap set up by the Maximals to ambush him. On the other other servo why would they only target him? Waspinator had no illusions about his lack of importance to his team.

He also thought about what this could mean if it was true. He, like many other Predacons of his generation, had been trained by Decepticon soldiers near the end of the war, but he had no real sparklinghood. None of them did. They were just a mass of experimental mechs and femmes that went on to replace their Decepticon ancestors. Fat lot of good it did when the Maximals ostracized them and treated them as less than Cybertronian just because the Autobots had won the war. Megatron might've been an extremist, but he had offered the Predacons that followed him a chance to reclaim their former glory. Waspinator had joined Megatron's cause more because he craved dignity as opposed to power.

Waspinator, curious about this supposed link to his genetic past, typed the name Quantum Boom into the downloaded historical database on his computer. It wasn't a name he was familiar with, and he wondered if this femme had been powerful. She certainly had a powerful sounding name.

According to the records Quantum Boom was born to a Decepticon mech named Quazar and had been orphaned at just over a vorn old when he was killed by Autobots. She was later adopted by Wheeljack, a prominent Autobot engineer, and joined the Autobots upon receiving her first adult frame at age 4 vorns. Her marriage records listed her as married to an Autobot satellite-former named Cosmos, and their last known residence was recorded as being the city of Kaon. They had a child named Nightscream and became neutral shortly before the war ended. Cosmos' death certificate was listed, but Waspinator didn't look into the cause because he didn't care. It was shown that after Cosmos died Nightscream ran away from home and Quantum Boom went to search for him, both never to be seen or heard from again. No one knew if or when she died, and a body had never been recovered.

Waspinator was intrigued by the circumstances of her supposed death, but more than that he wanted to see her military record. He realized it was an unimpressive one when he saw that Quantum Boom and Cosmos were delivery bots. They gave messages to those that couldn't trust the comm systems and delivered packages to Autobots. Her career was short too, as she and Cosmos became neutral after moving to Kaon.

"Figurez," Waspinator lamented, "Mommy Bot waz an Autobot lackey. Oh well. Maybe the frame will be worth zomething."

His processor made up, Waspinator flew out the window and away from the ship. He was sure this was probably a trap, but curiosity got the better of the Predacon. Whoever this Bitten was, they were probably planning an ambush. Well, Waspinator would be ready if they did.

* * *

Bitten looked at the sunset as she stood beside a dead tree waiting for Waspinator to show up. He was a half hour late, but she decided she would wait a little longer. The Maximals likely wouldn't even notice she was gone, except for Dinobot who would likely be relieved to get a break from her.

She looked over at the grey frame collecting dust on the ground. This was what Q-Boom would have wanted, Bitten told herself. She didn't know what happened in the past, but Bitten knew what happened when she lived on the Ark with her Sigma Sisters. Q-Boom had designed Waspinator when she was only 4 vorns old. She had wanted to build a sparkling with genetically engineered sigma abilities. It seemed like a pipe dream, especially for an unmotivated femme like Q-Boom, but Terrabyte still hoped that her old friend had succeeded.

Then again, Bitten realized that if Q-Boom succeeded then Waspinator would be a super weapon. He would basically be immortal and might even have inbuilt weapons upgrades that the Maximals couldn't fight against. Bitten brushed these thoughts away. This was Q-Boom she was talking about. Q-Boom couldn't program a VCR, let alone a super weapon.

Something flew toward her in the distance, and Bitten enhanced her vision to see who or what it was. Sure enough, it was Waspinator, so at least Bitten knew she hadn't been stood up. Still, she had to be on guard. She had been claimed by the Maximals, so that made this guy the enemy. It might be an ambush.

Waspinator landed and transformed into root mode. He was a head and a half taller than her, and more muscular too. Maybe not impressive to the Maximals and Predacons, but Bitten knew she would have to be careful.

"Oh, Hoppy Bot, it'z you," Waspinator greeted her suspiciously, "I zee you brought the frame. Zo, what'z the catch?"

"You are Quantum Boom's son," Bitten replied stoically, "Her frame is rightfully yours. It would be dishonorable to keep you from that which you are owed."

"Pfft. You zound like Dinobot," Waspinator snorted, "Zo, that'z really all you wanted? No trickz? No zurprizes? No backup?"

"No," Bitten replied simply, "We are done here. Do with her what you will."

Bitten then turned away from Waspinator and hopped in the direction of the Axelon. Waspinator was surprised that their meeting was so short, and that she really was just going to leave him with the body. He thought about this, and came to the conclusion that there must be a bomb or tracking device in the corpse, so he scanned it vigorously. Ten scans later he found nothing dangerous. There was a detonator inside the chest cavity under the seats, but there was no power feeding into it so it was little more than an empty case where a bomb used to be.

Waspinator realized he had actually been given a frame of one of their ancestors, and all with no strings attached. He stared at it, unsure of how to proceed. On the one servo this was something the Predacons could scrap for parts and use against the Maximals. There was reinforced plating, missile launchers, and blade weapons. Waspinator even noticed a nanobot system within the fissures of the plating that allowed it to magnetically repair itself; something Waspinator could desperately use for his own constantly abused frame.

Just as Waspinator was about to convince himself to turn the frame in to Megatron, however, a brief thought made him pause. This was Waspinator's carrier. After reading her life history he realized that this was an ancestor whose life had played out in a depressingly similar way to his own. She had been orphaned, recruited for military service in childhood, and never achieved the greatness and respect her position should have afforded her.

If Waspinator delivered Quantum Boom's body to Megatron to scrap, then she would be disrespected in death just as much as he believed she was in life. Waspinator didn't want his death to go unmourned and his frame to be torn apart life a carcass in a lion's den, and she probably wouldn't want that for her body either. He couldn't do that to the femme that gave him life, even if she'd never been there for him.

 _Wait_! Waspinator thought to himself. _Quantum Boom waz an Autobot. Why am I a Dezepticon? She would not give me to them if they were her enemiez, zo why?_

Waspinator's head was spinning. Something about this seemed very wrong. Why would an Autobot make a Predacon? Did she betray her people? Was she a double agent? She had been born a Decepticon, so it would fit. Maybe she had never been loyal to the Autobots at all, or maybe something happened to sway her opinion of them.

Waspinator took one more baleful look at the huge grey frame laying there on the dry ground. They certainly did make Cybertronians giant back in the day, Waspinator couldn't help but think. He sighed a buzzing sigh, knowing what he had to do to keep his carrier from being desecrated. Waspinator took a big rock from the ground and started digging a hole. He was going to give Quantum Boom a proper burial.

* * *

When Bitten returned to the Axelon she noticed that Optimus Primal, Rhinox, Rattrap, and Dinobot were outside scouting the area searching for something. She knew they would notice the missing frame, but she didn't think they would notice so quickly.

"Bitten," Optimus spoke first, "Someone came in here and stole the seeker frame. Did you see anything?"

Bitten didn't reply. She knew her silence looked guilty, but admitting it would only get her in trouble faster. They would probably execute her for what she did if they could prove it, so she would have to keep them guessing.

"I can't believe those stinkin' Preds managed to get past our defenses!" Rattrap shouted in frustration, "We didn't even detect 'em!"

Bitten tried to walk away and go into the ship, but she was cut off by Dinobot.

"I don't believe they _did_ get through our defenses," Dinobot growled, "Bitten, you know something. I can see it in your optics. Did you steal the frame? Confess!"

"Dinobot, enough!" Optimus reprimanded Dinobot's harsh methods, "Bitten is still grieving. That frame belonged to someone close to her. Bitten, if you did take the frame, what did you do with it? It's okay. You can tell us."

Bitten was conflicted. On the one servo she had managed to survive this long by keeping her mouth shut and evading any attempts to reach her spark. She knew she would stay alive if she said nothing. On the other servo, the Maximals had saved her life and she had assaulted Dinobot in her sleep. She owed them, and thus far she had not been able to find a complete means to repay them. She had just stolen a frame that could have been useful to them, which only added to her debt. Sighing, she realized that her accounting system wouldn't allow her to keep this a secret from them.

"I...took her away," Bitten admitted in a soft voice the Maximals had to strain to hear, "You will not find her. I apologize."

"Why would you do that?" Rhinox asked in an equally soft voice to try to avoid scaring Bitten, "Your carrier was protected here. Why take her away?"

"She is not my carrier," Bitten replied as she looked Rhinox in the optic, "She is Waspinator's carrier."

" _Waspinator_?" Rattrap asked in shock, "That seeker built a Pred?"

"Many, actually," Bitten elaborated, "However, Waspinator is the only one I could positively identify. She belonged with him. I could not keep her here, no matter what benefit we gained from her."

" _Why you little.._.!" Rattrap seethed, "Do you have _any idea_ what the Preds will do to that frame? _Do you_!?"

"It does not matter," Bitten replied resolutely as she looked challengingly at Rattrap, "It is not our decision. She would want her son to benefit from her if at all possible, and I will not dishonor the wishes of one of my best friends no matter what you have done for me. You might as well kill me. I already owe more than I can repay."

"You...you _…Grrr_!" Rattrap was so mad he couldn't even form a proper sentence.

Nobody knew quite what to do with Bitten. Clearly she had betrayed them, but she didn't run off and join the Predacons. They needed help around the base, but they couldn't trust her anymore. Bitten realized they were still too stunned to deal with her, so she walked into the ship and took the elevator to her room to await judgment there. She knew it was only a matter of time.

As Bitten sat quietly on her berth she ran her only hand along her hip and felt the fur there. It was an odd feeling to not have a door there. Her old frame had hip compartments for symbiotes, and she used to have three cassette siblings reside within the left take deck. Shriek, Screwball, and Turret were all older than Terrabyte, yet after the death of their carrier she had been tasked with nurturing and protecting them. She was grateful they weren't there to face her fate with her, yet at that moment she still selfishly wished they were there for her to talk to. She missed them, and she felt so alone on this strange ship with these strange beast-formers.

The door slid open, and Bitten sat stiffly and awaited whatever punishment was coming her way. She saw Optimus Primal standing there in his gorilla mode. It still seemed strange to her that someone with so much authority could still look so cuddly and adorable. That was another issue Bitten had with beast frames. They made soldiers look too lovable, especially for an animal lover like herself.

"Bitten, I'm not going to pretend I condone what you did today," Optimus began in a stern voice, "However, I understand that your motives weren't malicious in nature. Because of that, I'm going to give you another chance. That being said, if you ever pull a stunt like that again I'll have no choice but to arrest you as a Predacon sympathizer. This is war, Bitten. Given the era you came from I would expect you to know what that means. I mean, would you have given a weapon to the enemy back when it was the Autobots vs. the Decepticons?"

"My friend was _not_ a weapon," Bitten bristled, "She was a person, and she had a family. I respected the wishes of that family. I'm sorry I hurt your cause, but I refuse to treat my sister as leverage."

"You didn't answer my question though," Optimus pointed out, "If her family had been on the side you opposed, would you have still given her to them?"

"You don't know which faction I belonged to, do you?" Bitten astutely surmised, "That's alright. The truth is I don't care about either faction. I was born a Decepticon, but I was adopted into an Autobot family. I was nearly killed by Decepticons. I was also nearly killed by an Autobot. That Autobot became my surrogate father. You see, to me family will always be more important than a faction symbol. So to answer your question, I would have given my friend to Waspinator no matter the circumstances. I'm sorry."

"You don't sound sorry," Optimus observed, "At least, not sorry enough to stop yourself."

"No, I suppose not," Bitten had to admit, "Still, I feel bad that I upset you. You have all been very accommodating to me. I apologize that I have not lived up to what you want from me. I will do better now that I have no more attachments to my past. I hope that will be enough."

Bitten was starting to feel the stress in her spark from their prolonged conversation. Social anxiety always made these situations tough, and facing an authority figure like Optimus Primal only made it worse.

Optimus sighed, not really knowing how to reply to Bitten. She expressed the emotion in words but not in inflection. Her voice was monotone and her face barely moved. It was difficult to gauge how sincere she was at any given moment, but for now he was willing to believe she meant what she said.

"Report to the bridge in an hour, Bitten," Optimus ordered for lack of anything better to say, "You're on monitor duty with Cheetor. I'll be watching you closely, and I hope you won't let me down."

Optimus then turned to leave. Just as he made it to the door however, Bitten called out "Optimus Primal?"

"Yes?" Optimus asked.

"Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt," Bitten replied gratefully.

"If you want to thank someone thank Dinobot," Optimus told her, "He was the one that convinced me you weren't betraying us on purpose."

"Dinobot?" Bitten asked in surprise, "What did he say?"

"He said that you were following your personal code of honor," Optimus replied, "I think he respected you for that, though Dinobot isn't the type to say so."

Optimus left then, and Bitten was left to reflect on what just happened. Dinobot didn't hate her? He wasn't rallying for her execution? That was a surprise to her to say the least, given what precious little she knew about Dinobot's personality. He seemed like the cold suspicious type to her, but apparently there was more there than she gave him credit for. Beneath the cold aloofness, there was a spark.

That thought made Bitten think back to her adopted father. She wondered how Sunstreaker coped with her supposed death after the Nemesis exploded. She had left him a note but had never even bothered to say goodbye. She wasn't a sparkling anymore, but at that moment she wished she could go back home to the Ark and reach out for the spark that belonged to her guardian. She would walk through the door to see her symbiotes drinking energon. She would greet Sunstreaker as he polished his frame. He would show her how to paint and tell her all the stupid things Sideswipe did, and they would use their bond to tell each other they loved each other without having to say a word.

Bitten stroked her hip again, and then rubbed her chassis where her spark chamber was. She had never had no one in her bond before, and it was starting to feel like she was dead inside. Oh well, even if she wasn't a whole Cybertronian anymore at least she had a purpose. She owed fealty to Dinobot for the second time since arriving onboard the Axelon, and she would stay for however long it took to repay him.


	5. Project: Maximal

_Author's Notes: Hi everybody! This chapter isn't an action chapter. This is a chapter that's more about bonding and character development, but don't worry, it's Beast Wars so you know more action is coming soon. Also, since I'm not sure I'll be able to explain it in-story I'll say it now for those that have read the other Sigma Sister fics. Q-Boom isn't actually dead, but when Terrabyte was thrown into the past with Q-Boom's body Q-Boom's spark stayed behind. Anyway, thank you for reading this story, and I hope you will review :)_

* * *

Chapter 5

Project: Maximal

A couple orns passed without incident, though the Maximals continued to keep an optic on Bitten. This was especially bad news for Dinobot since he was often the one tasked with ensuring the small white femme performed her duties. He was beginning to feel like the kangaroo's prison warden, and part of him wished she would either go bother someone else or abandon the Maximals altogether.

The only other one that seemed to want to talk to Bitten was Tigatron, and that was only because he was unaware that the marsupial femme handed over Autobot technology to the Predacons. Bitten didn't really seem to enjoy his company, but then again she didn't really seem to enjoy anything. No one could tell exactly what was on her processor unless she told them, which she rarely did.

On this particular orn Optimus Primal was dividing teams of two to scout for energon crystals. He sent Cheetor with Rattrap, Airazor with Rhinox, and of course because his day wasn't already _perfect_ enough, Dinobot with Bitten. Oh well, at least it wasn't Rattrap.

While the other two teams were searching for energon in a field and a mountain respectively, Dinobot and Bitten were sent to the bottom of a canyon. The climb down was uneventful, and when they reached the bottom they both scanned the area in silence. Dinobot always had his audials trained in case of a surprise Predacon attack, but Bitten seemed more intent on watching Dinobot watch for Predacons.

"Ergh, would you _stop_ staring at me!?" Dinobot finally snapped after ten awkward minutes of her unwavering gaze, "Go check on the other side of the canyon!"

"There is nothing there," Bitten pointed out.

"I don't care!" Dinobot shouted irritably, "I'm going over to _that_ side. You check on the _other_ side _away from me_. It doesn't have to be energon. Just report whatever useful minerals you find. Now go!"

"Yes, Dinobot," Bitten replied dutifully before obediently going on her way.

Part of Dinobot felt bad for snapping at the young femme, but another part was furious that he even had to be stuck with her again. Every orn she followed him around like a lost puppy and stared at him with those large unwieldy yellow optics. She only spoke when spoken to, and she obeyed his every command. It felt like having a slave, and Dinobot was surprised to find he was uncomfortable with that. Predacons normally loved subjugating the weak, but Dinobot didn't want a prisoner blindly following him around. It just felt...wrong.

That was when Dinobot realized what was bothering him about the little kangaroo. Bitten stayed so close to him and served him because she felt she owed him some vague life debt. He didn't even understand why she felt she owed him anything. He felt that it was underhanded to take advantage of a young femme's insecurity and sense of honor for his own gain, yet he couldn't convince her that she didn't owe him anything. He needed to think of a way to make her feel the debt was repaid.

"Dinobot," Bitten called out in her soft, barely audible voice, "I found something."

Dinobot was surprised there was actually a mineral deposit where he had sent her. He ran over to see what she had found, but then growled low when he saw that she was pointing to a fallen baby bird that was barely alive.

"It's just a stupid bird," Dinobot grumbled at the interruption.

"Yes, it is a common specimen in this area, and it is in dire need of nourishment," Bitten elaborated on his statement, "Can I keep him?"

"You are an adult, Bitten," Dinobot replied with a sharp sigh, "You don't need anyone's permission to live your life as you see fit. If you want the slagging bird then just take it."

"What about Optimus Primal?" Bitten asked apprehensively.

"He isn't your sire nor your master," Dinobot replied impatiently.

"You are not happy," Bitten observed sadly.

"I don't like useless things," Dinobot explained curtly.

"Alright. I will keep that in mind," Bitten replied placidly, "I believe I will name him Metronome."

"Metronome?" Dinobot asked curiously, "So, you are from Polyhex?"

"I am," Bitten replied simply.

She then carefully picked up the baby bird with her only servo and gently settled the pink featherless thing in her warm pouch. Bitten then let out a squeal of joy when she felt the bird getting more comfortable in there.

"I didn't find anything," Dinobot reported, "We should probably get back to the ship."

"Yes, Dinobot," Bitten replied in her typical formal manner.

The duo then started the trek back up the path from the canyon below, their usual all-encompassing silence surrounding them. Dinobot, despite himself, kept staring back at the small femme as she tended to the bird. He saw her lean down at one point and pluck a worm out of the ground. She crushed it in her servo and then scooped the pink gory remains bit by bit into the baby bird's hungry beak. She barely even stopped walking to do so. It was the first time in hours she wasn't staring at Dinobot or another Maximal.

After several minutes of walking Bitten suddenly interrupted their silence by asking "Where are you from?"

"What?" Dinobot asked, barely able to hear her soft spoken question.

"I told you I was from Polyhex. Where are you from?" Bitten repeated herself patiently as she looked up at Dinobot.

"That conversation was 20 minutes ago," Dinobot pointed out, but when she continued to look to him for an answer he sighed and said, "Helex. My home city-state is Helex. It is the birthplace of the reptilian Predacon training camp as well as the location of the Combiner Wars of the third era. Helex's central square is where the mighty Grimlock of the Autobots destroyed the combiner Devastator single-handedly."

"You sound proud of that," Bitten noted, "I thought you disliked Autobots."

"The Dinobots are different," Dinobot explained, "They were among the first beast-formers. They were vicious, strong, honorable warriors. They are also my namesake. If they lived in our modern era, then I believe they might've been Predacons."

"I think you would be unpleasantly surprised if you met them in person," Bitten replied dryly, "I knew them briefly. They were...inexperienced. They did have honor, but they did not have your intellect or your ability to reason. You are not like them, and it is not a bad thing."

"So, you were an Autobot?" Dinobot asked for clarification.

"Briefly," Bitten replied.

For another few minutes they walked along in silence. They were close to the Axelon by this time, but still had to cross one more mountain. The energon in the atmosphere was taking its toll, so Dinobot transformed into beast mode. Bitten stayed as she was to prevent the baby bird being jostled. Bitten continued to stroke the head of the baby bird as she walked, and Dinobot continued to walk slightly behind her so it wasn't obvious he was watching her.

"Do you know the story behind Project: Maximal?" Bitten asked all of a sudden.

"I know they have conflicting accounts of how their _oh-so_ glorious race came to be," Dinobot replied with slight contempt, "Some say they were built by search and rescue 'Bots, while others say they were created by the Autobots to save fuel. Some even believe Primus himself declared them the next generation of Cybertronian development. Maximals are so full of themselves..."

"I was one of the few individuals that knew about Project: Maximal before it was completed," Bitten revealed almost casually as she stopped on the road, "They are correct in believing they were created as new more efficient soldiers for the Autobots. However, there is one thing history often forgets to mention: motive."

"What do you mean by that?" Dinobot asked curiously despite even wondering if Bitten was telling the truth.

"The creator of the Maximals was a femme named Honey Venom," Bitten told him, "I was still a sparkling, obviously, when she received her adult frame. She was an early adopter of the beast-frame method of transformation. She was a lion-former."

"With a name like Honey Venom?" Dinobot asked derisively, "She sounds more like a bee or a wasp."

"Honey Venom is an old-fashioned Altihexian name," Bitten explained, "That is not important, however. What was important to Honey Venom was gaining the favor of the Autobots. You see Dinobot, Honey Venom was a former Decepticon that joined the Autobots when she became convinced they would win the war and keep her and her family safe. There were many complications however, as she often fought with other Autobots over issues like ethics and behavior. She wasn't a Decepticon anymore, yet she did not fit in with the Autobots. It tore her apart mentally and emotionally."

"I can relate," Dinobot rumbled, "I joined the Maximals out of practicality and necessity, yet I often find myself questioning my choice. Their sensitivities and battle etiquette often elude me."

"Honey Venom felt the same way in her predicament," Bitten replied sympathetically, "Project: Maximal was going to be a last ditch effort to curry favor with the Autobots; by giving them small yet efficient warriors. Each original Maximal was endowed with part of her own spark, reducing her power and lifespan. She would not live to see the results of her accomplishment, however."

"Did she die with honor?" Dinobot asked, hoping for a happy ending for a character he so related to.

"She died at the hands of the original Megatron while seeking vengeance for her fallen mentor," Bitten told him, "I suppose by Predacon standards, she died with honor. Knowing Honey Venom however, she most likely would see her death as a miscalculation on her part. She was...a bit of a perfectionist."

"Why did you tell me this?" Dinobot asked.

"Because I miss her," Bitten replied sullenly, "She was my best friend. She saved my life when others left me to die, and even as she lay dying her final concern was for my safety. Many people did not like her. She was bossy, narcissistic, manipulative, and cunning. Beneath the surface however, there was a layer of caring for those that she deemed worthy of her respect. I suppose her friendship meant more to me because I had to earn it. She was honest with me, and we relied on each other to survive difficult circumstances. I...don't know what to do with my life. I have always had others to tell me my purpose, but now I don't. What do I do?"

"That is a most pathetic question," Dinobot snorted, "What do you do? What do you _want_ to do? Answer these questions, Bitten. What do you believe in? Where do your loyalties lie? Which side holds your values?"

"I..." Bitten tried to think of an answer to satisfy Dinobot, but it didn't come easy for her, "I...have never been asked these questions before. Honey Venom said we were Decepticons, but then when we were rescued by Autobots Honey Venom said we were Autobots. My caretaker Sunstreaker was an Autobot. He expected me to be an Autobot, too. I was rescued by the Maximals, so it makes sense that I would repay my debt to the Maximals. I suppose I believe in ledgers."

"Ledgers?" Dinobot asked incredulously, "That sounds so dry."

"Perhaps, but I believe that when someone does good for you, you should do good for them, and when someone tries to kill you, you have the right to hurt them," Bitten explained, "I know my way of life is not perfect, but I am not perfect either. I will stay with the Maximals because I owe them. I will make your life easier because you have helped to make my life easier. Whatever you give me, expect me to give you. It is that simple."

"So if I bit you then you would bite me?" Dinobot snarked with a chuckle, and Bitten was tempted to smile at seeing his sudden good humor.

"I would probably kick you, actually," Bitten deadpanned, and it took Dinobot a moment to realize she was joking.

"You do realize that attitude means you are easy to take advantage of?" Dinobot asked her pointedly.

"I know," Bitten replied, much to Dinobot's surprise, "I don't mind."

Dinobot just turned and stared at her. She didn't mind? What kind of insane creature craves domination and subjugation? Dinobot knew he would sooner rip apart anyone that tried to control him rather than submit, so he had trouble understanding why Bitten would allow others to dictate her life the way she had. She was powerful, he knew that much from seeing her in battle, so why not attempt to lead rather than allow herself to be led?

"Dinobot," Bitten dragged his attention away from his thoughts once again, "When we return to the Axelon, could you please go in first? I want to hide Metronome from Optimus Primal."

"You don't have to hide the fragging bird," Dinobot groused as they continued walking.

Bitten looked skeptical, but she accepted Dinobot's words. The rest of the trip was made in silence with Dinobot secretly wondering if this femme had some sort of virus or something as she petted her baby bird and her long kangaroo ears remained perked awaiting his next command.


	6. Full Deck

_Author's Notes: Hooray! Another update this week! I've been having trouble finding time and motivation to write, so I'm really glad things are starting to get back to normal again (for the moment). Lately I've been writing a lot of lighthearted stuff, and this chapter is no exception. I felt like writing adorableness, so that's what I did. According to my outline the next chapter should be more dramatic if I don't get any new ideas, so hopefully if you like this story you'll follow so you can catch that. Thank you for reading and/or reviewing, and I hope you enjoy this chapter of "I Owe You" :)_

* * *

Chapter 6

Full Deck

Optimus Primal awoke by the early morning light and groggily made his way through the small ship they called home to get to the control room. He went up the elevator to get to where he was going. Even before the door opened, however, Optimus could hear an unusual sound coming from the control room. Chirping.

Optimus entered the room cautiously and saw that Bitten was already at her monitoring station. She had a pink wrinkly baby bird in her pouch and was petting it fondly on its little head. It cheeped at her, and she gave it a pink goo that Optimus' sensors explained was crushed up worms.

 _Well, that's both admirable and disgusting._.. Optimus Primal thought to himself. _Well, at least she's found something to do besides drive Dinobot crazier than he already is._

Primal noted that Bitten didn't seem to notice him. Given how alert the femme usually was he was surprised by this oversight. She must have really enjoyed caring for that baby bird. Primal sat down at Sentinel's monitors and began to scan the skies for any sign of falling stasis pods. Just as everything had achieved a comfortable silence however, Bitten did something Primal never expected from the private femme. She began to sing.

 _A full deck, a full deck_

 _Oh how I want, a full deck_

 _Little ones, big ones_

 _Many daughters, many sons_

 _I am a host, I want the most_

 _Symbiotes_

 _In my tote_

 _Oh my dear, you need to let_

 _Me generate, a full deck_

The tune was jaunty and completely unlike the halting monotone speech pattern Primal generally associated with the kangaroo Maximal. He didn't recognize the song, but the nursery rhyme quality it held told him it was probably an ancient song that was sung to and by sparklings.

Bitten continued to sing the simple song for several minutes as she lightly petted the baby bird inside her pouch. Optimus felt a little sorry for Bitten and her efforts. He knew most baby birds, when separated from their nest, died before reaching maturity. He didn't approach her and say that though. She was happy, and it was a strange and beautiful sight to see what happy looked like on this femme.

* * *

It had been a week since Bitten had adopted her bird Metronome, and surprisingly it didn't die. Bitten would cuddle the bird when it was awake and research it's species on Sentinel when the bird was asleep. Bitten had virtually stopped interacting with the other Maximals altogether now that she had something else to pour all of her love and attention into.

At first everyone was satisfied with how this was working out, especially Dinobot since she stopped hounding him about how to repay her debt to him. He didn't remember what she had ever owed any of them, and it seemed she was forgetting as well. Now her world revolved around the care of the bird.

There was however one problem with Bitten's good mood, that it was getting on Rattrap's last circuit, especially one _particular_ aspect of her good cheer...

 _A full deck, a full deck_

 _Oh how I want, a full deck_

 _Little ones, big ones_

 _Many daughters, many sons_

 _I am a host, I want the most_

 _Symbiotes_

 _In my tote_

 _Oh my dear, you need to let_

 _Me generate, a full deck_

Bitten sang that infernal song all day long when she was supposedly comforting the bird. Rattrap liked it better when Bitten was a miserable stalker, because at least then she was a _quiet_ miserable stalker! All this singing was driving Rattrap nuts, and something needed to be done about it. Rattrap went outside to the target range and found just the mech he was looking for to help with his kangaroo problem.

"Hey, Dino-breath! You got a second?" Rattrap asked as he approached Dinobot, who was practicing his sword maneuvers on a boulder.

" _Grr_ , what do you want, rodent?" Dinobot snarled, clearly in no mood for chitchat.

"Listen, uh, Bitten listens to you, right?" Rattrap asked, trying to sound as pleasant as possible and knowing he was probably failing.

"I have not spoken to Bitten all week," Dinobot informed Rattrap.

"Yeah, I could tell," Rattrap muttered in consternation, "Look Dinobutt, you're the only one besides Boss Monkey that overgrown marsupial listens to, and I need your help. Make her stop singin' that stupid tape deck song!"

"Or what?" Dinobot asked challengingly.

"What do you mean _or what_?" Rattrap asked caustically, "Aren't you sick of it too?"

"Not really," Dinobot shrugged, "She has a nice singing voice."

"Eugh! It ain't about her voice!" Rattrap shouted haplessly, "She won't shut up! She's always singin' that slaggin' song to that slaggin' bird! I wish she'd just give that stupid thing away to Airazor or somethin'. At least a falcon raisin' a baby bird makes sense. You know that thing's gonna grow up thinkin' it's a kangaroo, right?"

"That's ridiculous," Dinobot chided Rattrap, "It's just an animal."

"Yeah, and now it's imprintin' on our fancy new jukebox!" Rattrap exclaimed as he threw his arms up in the air in defeat, "Dinobot, I'm beggin' ya! Make her stop singin' that blasted song!"

Dinobot smirked at the rodent's desperation, and would have chuckled if he felt it dignified. Instead Dinobot jabbed the tip of his sword into the ground and leaned on the hilt.

"Very well, vermin," Dinobot replied sinisterly, "I'll get Bitten to stop singing Full Deck. However, you have to do something for me."

"Name it," Rattrap replied even as a bad feeling crept up his spinal struts.

"You have to prove to me that you've heard the song too many times," Dinobot replied in barely suppressed glee.

"How do I do that?" Rattrap asked nervously.

"Sing it for me," Dinobot replied; his grin revealing his many sharp teeth.

"What!? No way! Never!" Rattrap protested.

"Fine, then _you_ talk to the femme about her singing," Dinobot replied tauntingly, "She might obey you, or she might use her sonic scream to make your head explode. Oh, what I would give to see her do that. Then again, maybe she's the sensitive type, and when you confront her she'll cry and lock herself in her room, forcing you to apologize and possibly even tempting her to sing the song even more as revenge. Who knows? We don't really know all that much about her, after all."

Rattrap groaned uncomfortably. Dinobot was right and he knew it. Bitten was stoic but also unpredictable due to her not being around all that long. For all Rattrap knew she could be a Predacon and only like Dinobot because he was also a Predacon. He didn't have a choice. He needed Dinobot's help.

" _Fine_ ," Rattrap sighed, "A full deck, a full deck. Oh how I want, a full deck. Little ones, big ones, many daughters, many sons..."

* * *

Dinobot knocked before entering Bitten's quarters, but didn't wait for a response. When he entered the room she was using a small comb to preen the slight plumage her baby bird was growing on its back. Metronome was growing at a healthy rate, and Bitten did everything in her power to care for it the way a mother bird would, even if it meant crushing worms and grooming new feathers.

"Bitten, I want to talk to you about something," Dinobot said without preamble, and Bitten gestured for him to sit next to her on her berth, "Bitten, you've been singing the same song all week, and I think you need new material."

"Full Deck is my happy song," Bitten replied matter-of-factly, "I have many other songs, but most of them are sad."

"Have you considered singing a sad song instead?" Dinobot asked.

"Not to Metronome," Bitten replied as if the very notion were silly, "He is good and pure right now. He deserves nice songs."

Dinobot sighed in exasperation. This conversation was getting him nowhere. Rattrap had asked Dinobot to get Bitten to stop singing Full Deck, but Dinobot wanted to mess with Rattrap by getting Bitten hooked on a different song. If she didn't know another decent song though...

"Perhaps you could sing a lullaby to the avian sparkling," Dinobot suggested, "I, um, I know of a Predacon folk song from my home city-state if you want me to write it down."

"That sounds lovely," Bitten replied with a small smile, "Please sing it for me."

"Sing? Oh no, I do _not_ sing," Dinobot replied insistently.

"Not even for Metronome?" Bitten asked dejectedly as she stared at Dinobot and patted the bird's little head as if to console it, "I'm sure he will love your song, Dinobot. Please sing it for him."

Dinobot growled and tried not to squirm. This was not how Predacons dealt with each other. Predacons threatened, bragged, bribed, fought, and cursed. Predacons did not pout and Predacons did not plead. Bitten's behavior was so undignified, yet she did it in such a rigid and dignified way. Dinobot didn't know how to combat such a femme, since she didn't seem afraid of him nor willing to yield.

"I...suppose I could sing it," Dinobot relented after a few tense moments, "I warned you though, I don't sing. My voice is terrible."

"I don't mind," Bitten replied as she took Metronome off the nightstand and placed him back in her pouch to listen to Dinobot's lullaby. Dinobot snorted in disgust at himself before he began.

 _You came down slashing with your platinum claws_

 _You sliced through the foe, you gnawed with your jaws_

 _Protect the people of Helex_

 _Protect the people of Helex_

 _Protect us our sparklings, our femmes and our mechs_

 _Protect the people of Helex_

 _You sniffed at the air and located your prey_

 _You found the intruder and you won the day_

 _Protect the people of Helex_

 _Protect the people of Helex_

 _Protect us our sparklings, our femmes and our mechs_

 _Protect the people of Helex_

Dinobot stopped his song and looked back at Bitten and her blasted bird. At first neither Maximal said anything, but then finally...

"You were right," Bitten replied with an amused smile, "You are a bad singer."

Dinobot growled angrily.

"However, I liked your song," Bitten added, and Dinobot marginally relaxed, "It tells of a rich and proud history for your people. I suppose that's why I like songs like Full Deck and My Spark Go Down. They are songs of Polyhex. I was raised in Altihex, but Polyhex is my first home. It will always have a special place in my spark, and I can tell you feel the same way about Helex. Many things have changed about Helex since my day, obviously, but it was a rather savage place even when I was a sparkling. It was where Honey Venom was sparked."

"This Honey Venom sounds like a memory that won't stop haunting you," Dinobot surmised as he crossed his arms over his chassis.

"Please understand, that while time has flown by for the rest of the universe, to me it is all still fresh," Bitten explained ruefully, "To me Honey Venom has not been gone that long. Besides, I feel it was my duty to die with her, and I failed."

"Survival is your greatest duty," Dinobot countered, "You are not a failure if you live to seize another day. I must admit I have never held a friend as close to me as you obviously held this Honey Venom femme, but I do understand standing by your comrades. You already told me your story however, and I do not feel you acted dishonorably. You live another day, and you owe it to yourself and to your fallen comrades to use your life in a way that honors the memories of all you have cherished."

Bitten's face became more determined then, and Dinobot knew he had reached her. If it was one language Bitten understood it was the language of debt. Perhaps now she would stop isolating herself and try to forge bonds with the other Maximals. Dinobot realized the irony of that thought, considering he himself also had trouble relating to his teammates. Still, he knew she needed this, and perhaps they could forge ahead together and support one another in understanding this strange new world they found themselves in.

* * *

A few more weeks passed, and what started as one baby bird soon became more than the Maximals could count. Metronome had grown to his adult size, and as it turned out he was a raven. Bitten started taking the the bird outside to train it to fly with a tiny camera around its foot and then fly back to base. On one of these trips Metronom's camera caught sight of an injured cheetah, and Bitten traveled to where it was and brought it back to tend to its wounds. Naturally Cheetor was the only one enthusiastic about this idea.

Since the cheetah was a predator and Metronome was prey Bitten asked the others if she could have a storage closet for the cheetah. Optimus Primal agreed on the condition that this was the only thing she brought home. It wasn't.

When the cheetah was nursed back to health Tigatron noted what a good job Bitten did, and he suggested they go on a scouting mission together to rescue more animals. Bitten liked the idea and readily agreed.

First they brought back a wild dog, then a duckling, then a baby bear, then a monkey, and before long there were animals crawling flying and running all over the Axelon.

Optimus Primal was getting tired of this new hobby of Bitten's. Every time he entered the control room there was a new animal lying there or looking up at him. He started entering the room in his robot mode because his gorilla mode upset certain animals. He tried to get to computer one morning only to find an eagle sitting in his chair! Enough was enough.

"Bitten!" Optimus Primal bellowed, and soon the white kangaroo was hopping into the room; holding Metronome on her handless wrist like a pirate holding a parrot, "Bitten, you have got to find someplace else for these animals to go. They're taking over the ship!"

"I apologize," Bitten replied automatically.

"Don't apologize, fix this!" Optimus ordered curtly.

"How?" Bitten asked, "I am looking after the animals by myself. I don't have time to find a new facility."

"Hm...maybe we can build you an animal sanctuary outside the ship," Optimus pondered, "It would have to be out of visual range of the Axelon so that the Predacons won't attack it. Would outdoor pens be enough?"

"Yes, though I would request an enclosed space for the birds and a separate place for predators and prey," Bitten suggested, "Maybe someday I'll even dig a lake for fish. They can serve as food for the predators as well as add some color to the barren landscape."

Optimus Primal chuckled goodnaturedly then, and Bitten wondered if she had missed some sort of joke being played on her. Metronome flew away, and both Maximals looked at it as it fled through the elevator door. That bird was getting too smart for his own good.

"Ah, all this talk of landscaping and building reminds me of the old days growing up at the foundling home," Optimus Primal reminisced, and Bitten's optics went wide in surprise.

"You were a foundling?" Bitten asked him, "So was I."

"Really? Small universe," Optimus Primal replied with a smile, "Yeah, I grew up off-world from Cybertron on a planet called Kloryll. I lived at a nice big foundling home called the Red Honey Byte Memorial Home. Strange name I know, but it had a rich history. It was built before beast-frames became standard, and was the first foundling home to specifically cater to beast-frames. I never got adopted, but the caretakers there were good to us."

"It sounds much better than where I grew up," Bitten commented, a hint of bitterness in her tone, "Where I lived the caretakers were cruel, and if you weren't in a gang you didn't survive. Were there gangs in your foundling home, sir?"

"Yeah," Optimus nodded.

"Were you in one?" Bitten asked curiously.

"Sort of," Optimus shrugged, "It wasn't really a gang. Just me and Rattrap."

" _Rattrap_?" Bitten asked incredulously, "You and Rattrap knew each other as sparklings?"

"Yeah, we did," Optimus replied wistfully, "Neither one of us was very popular. Rattrap was known for getting in trouble and swindling the other orphans. The caretakers didn't know what to do with him and the other sparklings begrudgingly put up with him. I was strong, but I was often made fun of for having hobbies that others would consider...I guess _weak_ is a good word for it. Either way we looked out for each other and made the best of things. Rattrap was actually the one that saved up the money we needed to move to Iacon and go to school to learn how to be off-world scientists. I know he's a pain in the aft sometimes, but I don't know where I'd be without him."

"I see," Bitten replied noncommittally, but then asked, "What kind of hobbies?"

"Oh, well...gardening, actually," Optimus replied with a surprisingly sheepish expression, "I loved landscaping and gardening as a sparkling. I've always loved exploring new plant life and discovering the majesty of every new planet I visit. Back in the day science was encouraged, but only if it meant building something. Mechs didn't appreciate the value of just observing things back then. Even though we're trapped in this war with the Predacons, I'm still glad I get a chance to do what I've always wanted to do; explore new worlds."

Bitten smiled up at him with a new appreciation she didn't have for the gorilla-former before. Optimus Primal was a tough leader, but she could also tell he had a kind spark. She was glad she stayed with the Maximals, and she looked forward to the animal enclosure for her new contribution to this world. She wasn't much a fighter, but she knew she would be a great veterinarian.


	7. Old Wounds

_Author's Notes: Hooray! Two updates in one day! *throws confetti*. Anyway, I think Friday is going to be my day of the week to update fics from now on. Fanfic Friday. LOL! Hopefully this will help me get organized and make it easier to get new chapters up for you all. I've been wanting to post this chapter of "I Owe You" for a while, though admittedly I still may be doing it too soon. This is the first chapter of the B plot, involving everyone's favorite panther cassette :)_

* * *

Chapter 7

Old Wounds

The Tripredacus Council had a serious problem on their servos. For decades they had done their best to foster peaceful and mutually beneficial relations with the Maximal High Command. Someday the Tripredacus Council intended to try to take over the Maximals in a bloodless coup, but these efforts would take time and patience. That rogue terrorist Megatron and his followers were ruining everything, and they needed to reel him in before their carefully crafted plans went by the wayside.

Fortunately for the Council, they had a double agent on their side that was more than qualified for the job. One of Cybertron's oldest citizens, a master spy by the name of Ravage. He was an odd mech in the way he transformed. Rather than being a mech that transformed into a beast, he was a beastly looking mech that transformed into an old-fashioned tape. Being a former cassette symbiote of the ancient Decepticon Soundwave, it was no wonder that old habits remained.

The doors to the council chamber opened and in walked a black panther looking mech standing on two legs. He was short even by the standards of the current beast-frames on Cybertron, but he had a determined and regal bearing that made him look formidable. It was hard to believe he was millions of years old. The three council members said nothing, but Ravage could tell they were sizing him up. Well, let them. He knew his abilities were unmatched.

"Greetings, Tripredacus Council," Ravage bowed formally as he spoke with an odd accent that indicated spark language was his native method of speech, "I understand you have a job for me. What was so important that you refuse to discuss it over my encrypted comm frequency?"

"I trust you are familiar with Megatron?" The council member to the left asked him rhetorically.

"My former master or the dinosaur?" Ravage asked for clarification.

"The dinosaur," The council mech replied flatly, "Our sources tell us he got into a fight with a Maximal science vessel before both ships were lost in a wormhole that affected both space and time. I'll cut to the chase, Ravage. We fear that the golden disk Megatron stole might be historical records that he intends to use to alter the timeline. We need a specialist to capture Megatron and his crew for trial, as well as someone to do away with the Maximals that witnessed the theft. As far as Cybertron is concerned the disk was never stolen and everything is fine."

"Why not simply leave the Maximal dolts to their own devices?" Ravage shrugged indifferently.

"That's not possible," The council mech on the right interjected, "The ship is called the Axelon, and it was seen leaving the Wheeljack Memorial Research Center. I'm sure you'll recall your last mission at _that_ particular lab."

"Ah yes, Project X," Ravage recalled fondly, "I destroyed their notes and left them with nothing but a single prototype."

"We have reason to believe the Maximals that ran into the terrorists have the prototype," The center council mech informed Ravage.

"I see," Ravage replied thoughtfully, "That does complicate things. I may be a good spy and a decent warrior, but I cannot take on the likes of Project X should I encounter him. I am going to need some muscle."

"I was afraid you would ask," The center council mech said hesitantly, "I can think of one individual that might be able to help you, but you'll have to make a stop at the Flatline Asylum in Kaon."

"A mental patient?" Ravage asked skeptically.

"Yes," The center council mech nodded firmly, "You will ask for a Maximal inmate named Quillbit. I know the name sounds innocuous, but this creature is dangerous and has unpredictable mood swings. Quillbit is incredibly powerful and was used as one of the original guinea-pigatrons for Project X. Quillbit's hatred for the Maximals that conducted the project as well as for Project X's existence should be enough for you to work with."

"Fine," Ravage replied less than enthusiastically, "I do not like this idea, but I will travel through space and time in a cramped ship with an criminally unstable Maximal if it means taking down the dirtbag that dares to call himself by my deceased master's name. Now if there is no other business, I have other things to do today."

Without waiting for a response Ravage turned his back and walked away from the stunned council. Normally no mech could slight the Tripredacus Council and get away with it. These were not normal circumstances however, and this was no normal Predacon. They knew if they were going to be rid of Project X and Megatron, they needed a master of persuasion like Ravage.

* * *

Ravage was running late for his previously scheduled appointment, but he knew he needed to go to Kaon and clear the release of his so-called _partner_ so the mission could begin quickly. He hated working with a Maximal, and he especially hated unknown elements being thrown into his carefully crafted plans. He didn't know anything about this Quillbit mech. All he could gather was that the name indicated either porcupine, echidna, or hedgehog. Those were the only three beast frames that used such a name.

Ravage showed his security clearance to the mech standing at the front gate and walked into the Flatline Asylum without incident. Most of the patients and attendants were Predacons, so Ravage fit right in. He vaguely wondered for a moment why a Maximal would be locked away in Kaon, and felt that the most likely scenario was that the foolish creature had been charged with a crime of some sort by the Tripredacus Council and sent here. He hoped it was murder, since he needed someone strong and without conscience to help him deal with Megatron.

"Welcome to Flatline Asylum," A friendly lizard-frame receptionist greeted Ravage, "Are you here to visit someone, sir?"

"Yes. I am here to see Quillbit," Ravage replied.

"Quillbit?" The receptionist blinked in surprise, "No one's ever come here to see Quillbit before. That might be a bit of a problem."

"How so?" Ravage asked.

"Well, we can't exactly let Quillbit leave the secured area," The receptionist replied nervously, "Last time that slagging needle-bag escaped two of our orderlies were forced into stasis lock. We were lucky no one was killed, but three rooms in the asylum were destroyed. We had to replace walls, the ceiling, part of the roof, and four broadcast screens. It was a disaster area for orns."

"I see," Ravage said disinterestedly, "I will meet with the patient in the secured area, and then I will discuss with the manager of this facility an order I have directly from the Tripredacus Council."

"Did they finally find a way to kill Quillbit?" The receptionist asked hopefully.

"Not to my knowledge," Ravage replied, "Now, take me to the patient."

"Hold on. I'll call the guards to escort you to the secured area," The receptionist told him, though it was clear she felt he was making a mistake.

Ravage waited without complaint until two large insect-formers arrived to take Ravage to the holding area where they kept the patient. They got on an elevator, and Ravage noted there were 7 floors, a lobby, and a basement on the selection pad. Just his luck, the guards selected the basement. It reminded him of the scary movies his younger siblings used to watch, and a smile crossed Ravage's faceplate. He could still see Rumble throwing popcorn at the earth-made TV. Nobody ate popcorn on board the Nemesis, but the cassettes made popcorn because they needed something to throw at the screen.

When they got to the basement Ravage saw that there were several cells on this floor, and every one of them was reinforced with lead walls that were 7 feet thick. Whoever was in this section was _staying_ in this section.

"Each cell has a walk-in area with a clear diamond barrier," A guard explained to Ravage, "You will be able to speak to the patient via the intercom system, but you will have no physical contact with the patient. Understand that this is for your own safety. The patient is considered violent and dangerous."

"So are most Cybertronians," Ravage replied with a sly smirk.

When they got to the desired room one of the guards leaned his face against a screen for an optical scan. The machine recognized his clearance and they walked into the visiting area. It was a barrier with barely enough room for Ravage to lean against the wall at his back. He could move from side to side, but he could not sit down. The room behind the diamond wall was slightly larger, but still small considering it was a place the patient was never allowed to leave.

Ravage looked in on the patient, and just as he guessed Quillbit was a porcupine. Quillbit was dark grey with a light blue face and yellow optics. The quills around the back, arms, and legs were a beautiful design of alternating grey, white, and black markings; just like on earth. The torso was muscular like with many soldiers, but something seemed off about the design to Ravage. Quillbit was tall, but not very stocky. That meant...

"You are a femme," Ravage commented.

"Huh?" Quillbit lifted her head from her sit-sleeping position to regard Ravage, "Oh, right. I heard I had a visitor. I thought that fraggin' nurse was playin' a joke on me. What do you want, Pussycat?"

"I wish to discuss your release," Ravage replied with a confident grin, "I have been granted the power to free you."

"I checked myself in, Pussycat," Quillbit stated listlessly, "I ain't leavin'."

"Even though your planet needs you?" Ravage asked in an effort to appeal to her sense of patriotism, "Cybertron is in grave danger. All that we know could be lost if something is not done. A terrorist that calls himself the new Megatron has stolen something very valuable, and your services are required to retrieve it. Come now, Quillbit. Surely you don't want to see Cybertron destroyed, do you?"

"I've given enough to Cybertron," Quillbit replied bitterly, "Let it burn. Let it drown. Let it get stuck up a Unicron-sized tree. I don't care."

"I must say Quillbit, for someone in forced isolation you are very coherent," Ravage commented in an effort to move on to a more pleasant mode of conversation, "I am certain you are an intelligent femme. If Cybertron dies, then _you_ die. Do you want to die?"

"You say I'm smart yet you talk to me like a sparkling," Quillbit retorted as her optics narrowed in warning, "You're wastin' your time. I don't wanna help you."

"Even if it makes you a national hero?" Ravage asked, grasping at anything he can think of to persuade her, "Even the Maximals cannot ignore a hero. You would be welcomed back into society. Is that not what you want? To be respected?"

"I wanna die," Quillbit replied bluntly, "I wanna die, and if I can't do that then I wanna feel somethin'. The nurses give me pretty little pills that make me feel dead without killin' me, and they do it because it makes their lives easier. You want my help because it'll make your job easier. I'm already stifled and kept alive, but I will not be used. Now get lost before I show you why they keep me down here."

"There must be something else you want," Ravage insisted, "Something that would make your life worth living again. Perhaps a little revenge?"

"I outlived everyone I could ever want revenge on," Quillbit growled and stepped closer to the glass; her back hunched like a shambling ghoul, "I wish you'd just _leave_ already! I feel itchy around you. I can't be around mechs like you anymore. I don't wanna talk to you anymore!"

"I wish you would reconsider," Ravage replied disappointedly, "I need a partner to take down Megatron and Project X, and the Tripedacus Council were certain you would-"

"Project X?" Quillbit interrupted as she stood to her full height and her quills stood on end, "You wanna kill Project X? HAHAHAHAHA!"

Quillbit started beating the diamond barrier with her fist she was laughing so hard, and Ravage just stood there trying not to feel humiliated at the fact that a mental patient thought _he_ was the crazy one.

"You wanna kill-? Hahaha! You must be _jokin_ '!" Quillbit gasped from laughing so hard, and then finally after a few more soft chuckles managed to compose herself, "So...if I got this straight...you want me to help you kill Project X?"

"Technically I need to silence the Maximal scientists that were charged with moving Project X," Ravage clarified.

"Really?" Quillbit asked; interested, "So, if I leave here and go with you, I get to kill the slag heaps that created Project X?"

"Yes," Ravage replied as he stood straighter and crossed his arms; knowing he had her where he wanted her, "So Quillbit, do you have something to live for now?"

"No," Quillbit replied, to Ravage's shock, "Once I kill them I'm still me. Avengin' Project X won't fix that. Besides, without my pills I'll go into a psychotic rage. If you're the closest thing to me when that happens, you're dead. Plain and simple."

"That is a chance I am willing to take," Ravage affirmed, "So tell me Quillbit, what is it about you that makes everyone fear you?"

"Nobody knows how to kill me," Quillbit shrugged, "Oh, and you might want to invest in a really thick hull for your ship. I break things when I get upset and space has no gravity."

Ravage's optics went wide at the casual way Quillbit said that. He realized then that this was going to be a dangerous and complicated mission, and the partner that was supposed to make this easier was in fact going to be his greatest liability.

"I will see about getting you released by next orn," Ravage promised, "For now I must leave, however. I have an appointment I must not miss."

"You're leavin'?" Quillbit asked in disappointment, "But you're my first visitor ever! Don't leave! We didn't even play 'guess that smell'!"

Ravage cringed, both at her sudden shift in desires and in the idea of a game called _guess that smell_. She had tried so hard to get him to leave, and now she begged him to come back. It was true, this patient _was_ unpredictable.

* * *

Ravage drove down the streets of Polyhex, his home city-state, in a shuttle and briefly glanced up at the starry night as he went. That trip to Kaon had been rough, and his new mission seemed like suicide itself, but at least now he was back on track. He had stopped by the grocery store on his way to Polyhehis destination, and now he could keep his regular appointment.

He stopped the shuttle in front of an apartment complex that had seen better orns. It was a trip he made every other orn, and virtually everyone that lived here recognized his shuttle, even if they didn't necessarily know him. He opened the back seat and lifted the cube of groceries onto one of his shoulders to carry it inside.

One elevator trip later and Ravage found himself at apartment 0814. He took out his spare key and unlocked the door, knowing he was expected by the residence's occupant. He was greeted by the stench of rotting fruit peels and the feel of sticky carpet under his pedes. It was expected. He came here every other orn and knew the femme who lived here couldn't properly clean the place.

"Ra-vage!" A cry of joy escaped from the armchair, and a bat-former femme eased herself up to shamble over to where Ravage was standing at the doorway.

"Hello Syphon, I trust you are well this evening?" Ravage asked warmly as he walked over to the counter to start putting away groceries.

"Ya shouldna strain yasef," Syphon chided in an accent that sounded like her mouth was swollen, and since her mouth couldn't close that wasn't too far from the truth.

Ravage chuckled lightly but didn't stop putting away her groceries. He knew Syphon always wanted to be a good hostess, but he also knew her physical capabilities grew more limited by the orn. Her drooling open mouth, crooked limbs with rusting joints, and matted black fur was enough to tell him she needed every ounce of help he gave her.

"So, how was ya day?" Syphon asked jovially as she opened the fridge and pulled out a steak, "Did ya see da council?"

"I did, and I have a new mission," Ravage replied vaguely, but then saw what she was doing with that steak and frying pan and asked, "Why do you do this? You know you cannot eat that."

"I know. It'sh not fo me," Syphon replied with a wide grin, "I know how nuch ya like steak. Ifs ya got a new nission, then ya need ya stength. I also got ya favoruh shoda. Cannon Cola."

Ravage shook his helm and chuckled at the femme. She was always trying to please him, always trying to help. He didn't know how a femme that had suffered so much for so long could be that cheerful. Then again, she was only like that in here. The old bat never left the apartment anymore due to PTSD and onset agoraphobia. Ravage knew her mental damage was more crippling than her physical damage, so he always did his best to assist his late brother's widow.

Ravage saw that she wasn't going to stop until she had made him dinner, so he sat down on the marble loveseat and worked a crossword puzzle on one of her loose data pads.

"You should see the Tripredacus Council these days," Ravage said conversationally, "They would not be able to find their own tails if it weren't for mechs like myself doing all of their dirty work. It is not like it used to be, Syphon. Back in our day mechs stood on their own merits. I believe you and I may be the only ones who truly understand what sacrifice and hard work actually mean anymore."

"Uh-huh," Syphon nodded while she stirred a pot of gravy, "Ya want steak sauce?"

"Yes, please," Ravage replied with a nod, "I went to Kaon tonight. It is still a turbo rat infested pit. The Maximals force us into _squalor_ and don't even seem to care."

When Ravage didn't get a reply he turned around to see Syphon's red optics wide and her entire frame shaking while she still held her stirring spoon. Her wings were tight against her frame, and Ravage could tell she was either having another seizure or another flashback.

When Syphon started to fall Ravage sprang into action immediately and caught her. She felt rigid in his arms for a moment but then when she caught his worried gaze she relaxed and went limp in his hold.

"Sowwy, Ra-vage," Syphon apologized sheepishly, "I finish dinnah now."

"No, you sit now," Ravage insisted gently as he carried her to the kitchen table and sat her in one of the thin metal chairs, "I can cook dinner for myself. Now, what kind of juice do you want?"

"O'ange, tees," Syphon replied, which Ravage knew meant "Orange, please."

Syphon was not capable of digesting most forms of organic matter like a normal Predacon. She could only drink liquids, which normally meant either having nothing but juice or else shoving real food in a blender. After trying to blend cookies and ham she learned not to try that again.

Ravage made his meal and got Syphon her juice. She shakily tried to get the glass cube to her open maw, but realized her wrists weren't up to it so she set the cube down before it broke. Ravage took a few bites of his steak and gravy, but then looked up from his meal to see Syphon looking dejectedly at her full cube of orange juice.

"Do you wish for me to assist you?" Ravage asked, knowing sometimes she needed his help to refuel.

"No, no, I got it!" Syphon protested, trying to save some sliver of her dignity.

Syphon tried with both servos to lift the cube and tilt her helm back to drink, but most of it spilled on her body rather than her mouth. This was why her floor was always sticky and her fur always matted. It was because of this infernal struggle to keep herself fed.

Ravage sighed and then got up from his own meal to help Syphon. He poured another glass of juice and then put his servo on her leathery wing in a silent command to tilt her helm back. She complied and looked lovingly at Ravage's impassive face as he tilted some of the contents of the cube into her damaged mouth and down her fuel intakes.

"Sank you, Ra-vage," Syphon said after he was finished, "I lovthe you, Ra-vage."

He knew she did, and not in the same way he did for her. Ravage took care of Syphon because she was the widow of his brother, and he viewed her as a younger sister. Syphon however was desperately lonely and starved for the kindness that Ravage showed her. She did love him; intensely loved and craved him. Ravage knew if he asked her to throw herself from the balcony with her wings clipped from her body she would do it for him. She would do anything for Ravage.

Ravage of course would never take advantage of this situation. While he would not mind a femme's touch once in a while Syphon was old, damaged, and needy. She had been a great beauty once, and had once been powerful as well. Vorns of abuse and loss had ruined her. Perhaps if she had shown interest in him before she met...no, even then it never would have worked. Syphon simply wasn't his type, even back then.

"Ra-vage," Syphon called his attention back to the present, "I wish ya had cun ovuh yestaday. Yestaday was da day...da annidersary. I niss hin..."

He can see tears welling up in her ruby optics. Ravage knows exactly what she is talking about. The anniversary of the orn when Syphon felt her spark bond break. When she knew for certain that her bondmate was dead and was never returning to her. He had saved her from a cruel fate, and Ravage was pleased when the couple bonded. The joy was not to last, however. Like most Decepticons, Ravage's brother had a stubborn streak and a lust for power. That encompassed everything else, even the bond with his beloved Syphon.

"I am leaving tomorrow," Ravage suddenly finds himself saying before he can stop himself, "My new mission involves hunting down the false Megatron and his rebels. I will be gone for a long time. I do not know when I will return."

"What? _No_! You _can't_!" Syphon screeches in misery, "I can't lose you too! Ra-vage, tees don't go! I'll die wissout you!"

"I am sorry, but it cannot be helped," Ravage said resolutely, "My planet needs me. The Predacon cause needs me. I and my partner are the only ones that can do this. I shall do my best to return alive."

"I'n going, too!" Siphon declared, and the forcefulness and absurdity of those words makes Ravage quirk an optic ridge, "I need ya, and ya need ne. I can helt ya. Tees let me go, too. I tromiss I'll de heltful."

"No, _absolutely_ _not_ ," Ravage replied adamantly, "This is too dangerous for you. Not only will I be dealing with rogue Predacons and a deadly secret project, but I will also be going through a time/space wormhole and I will be traveling with a crazed mental patient with an immortal spark! You will stay here."

"Are you sure adout dat?" Syphon asked with a sudden mischievous glint in her optic as Ravage tries to figure out her sudden change in mood, "Cause if I got dis straight, you just told ne eserysing adout yah nission. Da time wonhole, da Negatron, da crashee nental tayshent, eserysing. I can tell on ya. So, ya has to take ne. I'n a _witness_."

Ravage's spark nearly hitched when he realized she was right. Syphon was loyal to no faction and he feared she might actually turn on him if she felt abandoned. He was surprised however at how much she wanted this. She was afraid to leave her apartment and now suddenly she was willing to travel across space and time with Ravage and a dangerous criminal? He was right. She did love him.

"Be ready by morning," Ravage said coolly, "If you cannot keep up you will be left behind, and if Project X kills you I will simply say I told you so as your spark fades out. Understand?"

"Yay!" Syphon cheered undeterred, "We goin' on a field trit!"

Ravage groaned and rubbed his helm in exasperation. Syphon was the closest thing he had left to a living relative, and she was just as annoying as the siblings he had already seen deactivate. Ravage knew this was a terrible idea, but he supposed her being killed quickly in battle would be a more dignified death than wasting away in a smelly sticky apartment as she slowly starved. He could have killed her himself to keep her quiet, but he knew deep down he couldn't bring himself to actually do it. She had meant too much to him for far too long.


	8. Blunt Beauty

_Author's Notes: I had hoped to write a more action-oriented chapter than what I ended up with here. What I wrote instead was introspective fluff. I don't know if I'm happy with that or not, but it advances the plot so I'm keeping it. Thank you guys for reading. I don't even know if anyone cares about this story still, but I still care so I'm going to try to update at a more regular pace. Thank you all for your patience :)_

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Chapter 8

Blunt Beauty

It had taken a few weeks, but the Maximals had built the new enclosure for injured animals. Tigatron had been all too eager to assist Bitten in her new passion project, and she had convinced Rhinox, Airazor and Cheetor to pitch in as well. During the project, Tigatron had even told Bitten about his first love, another white tiger named Snowstalker that had been killed during a skirmish. Bitten thought romantic love for an animal was strange, but she didn't voice this opinion out loud. After all, Tigatron was a good mech and a good friend to her.

The final product was a maze of pens and tanks for Bitten to house animals they found sick or injured while patrolling for Predacons. Tigatron also felt this would be a good triage center if any animals should become injured during their battles. Dinobot thought the whole idea of not letting nature take its course was idiotic, but the new Maximal vet clinic would keep Bitten out of his scales for a while so he didn't object in front of her.

After everything was finished the change was almost instantaneous. Bitten spent most of the day and even most of the night outside the Axelon in the clinic. It became a perfectly normal sight to see the white kangaroo hopping about in the pens with her pet raven on her shoulder and her only servo holding either medical equipment or food for one of her patients. Rattrap had once commented that she looked like an Australian pirate with that bird and missing servo, and for some reason Dinobot felt offended by that remark. He didn't know why. Rattrap wasn't insulting _him_ (for once). Then again, he knew that if Bitten ever heard Rattrap speak like that she would never defend herself. He felt it unjust to mock someone that never fought back.

Bitten meanwhile was oblivious to it all. Since she had the blessing of the crew to be useful in the clinic, she felt she was repaying her debts while at the same time doing what she loved. She would lose herself among the animals she was never allowed to have in her sparklinghood, allowing herself to forget war and hate so she could bask in this paradise of hissing snapping mewling fauna.

Bitten wasn't even sure anymore how much time had passed since she got the clinic. It could've been days, or weeks, or months. She barely laid optics on another Maximal during that time, and she didn't care. As grateful as she was to her new comrades, they weren't her family. It took a lot for Bitten to consider anyone her family.

 _Family_... Bitten suddenly thought as she stopped in her task of cleaning a recently evacuated pen.

For some reason in that moment Bitten thought of her former caretaker, Sunstreaker. She had disappeared from his life without ever getting the chance to properly say goodbye. She had wrote a note saying she was leaving to help with a mission, but due to the time rift she was never able to go back.

Did he think she had been killed by Megatron? Did he search for her? If her spark wasn't there, it must've hurt him to have that guardian bond suddenly sever. Did he survive? It was a new bond, but it was still a strain on his spark.

There was so much left unsaid, and so many mixed feelings left without closure. She loved him, she was angry with him, she owed him her life, and she missed him. He was an Autobot, and specifically the one that killed her mother. She should hate him. For so long she had hated and feared him. She was sure that her being a Decepticon and him being an Autobot meant he would kill her. Then she got to know him, and realized that no mech's servos were left clean after eons of war. He was so much like her, a lost awkward being trying to hide his fragile spark with indifference. They rarely spoke, but they rarely had to.

This also led to her wondering what became of the symbiotes. Terrabyte had 3 symbiotes to care for that had belonged to her late mother. Shriek, Screwball, and Turret could not survive without a carrier host. They probably went to Blaster, or maybe they ran away and joined the Decepticons for a chance to be in Soundwave's tape deck. Would Soundwave or even Blaster tolerate them for long? Screwball had processor damage and was unstable, Turret and Shriek were know-it-alls, and all three could be annoying together. They were probably killed shortly after she...

Bitten tried to put these thoughts aside as she worked around the enclosures. She knew everyone she loved was gone, lost to space and time and there was nothing she could do about it. Might as well grow up and move on with her life.

As she tried to force the thoughts away she heard the lift open on the Axelon and deposit Optimus Primal outside. He was in gorilla form and holding a scanner, but Bitten could also detect that the guns hidden by his beast form were fully charged. He was going out on patrol.

"Bitten," Optimus called out, slightly surprising the femme despite no outward appearance of doing so, "Bitten, can I have a word with you?"

"Of course, sir," Bitten replied without moving, her intense yellow gaze tracing his every step toward her.

"Listen, the Predacons have been patrolling the area near our border at grid delta," Optimus informed her, "I need a team to investigate the area but everybody else is on an energon run. It's just you, me, and Dinobot. So, I want you to guard the ship while Dinobot and I search the grid."

"Excuse me, sir?" Bitten was tentative as she spoke, "I do not know how well I read the grid sensors. I...am ashamed to admit, but during monitor duty I usually just rely on my partner to read the grid. May I...patrol instead?"

"Hm, alright. This time. But when you get back you're taking a refresher course on those monitors," Optimus replied firmly, "Dinobot will meet you here. If it's the Predacons, then don't let them get too close to the base. Use whatever force is necessary."

Bitten nodded obediently and then went around the sanctuary to ensure every pen was locked. Satisfied that everything was in order, Bitten met Dinobot by the ship and started the long walk to check for Predacon activity.

* * *

Dinobot and Bitten didn't speak to each other once during the trip to grid delta. That wasn't too surprising to Dinobot. He had nothing to say to Bitten, and she rarely had anything to say to anyone. He did notice that since he had transformed from beast mode to robot mode she kept staring at him. True, she stared at everyone, but he could sense that something was on her processor.

Now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen Bitten at all in weeks, and though he would never outwardly admit such a thing, he had actually missed her company. He wasn't even sure why. It was likely because she didn't distrust or belittle him. While the Maximals tried to be civil to Dinobot and might even consider him a friend, it was clear that his Predacon past got in the way of absolute trust.

Bitten wasn't like that, however. She looked at him not with suspicion but with awe. It wasn't just that she obeyed his orders, but she looked at him like he had all the answers. There was no judgment in those optics, and no suspicion. She didn't insult his savage ways nor mock his moments of sophistication. As off-putting as her silent staring and passiveness could be, she gave Dinobot an unconditional acceptance that not even the Predacons had given him.

Suddenly, there was a noise in the distance, and Dinobot ordered Bitten into the grass. They both ducked low to see what would come their way, and Dinobot readied his blade just in case. Dinobot sniffed the air despite being in robot mode, but he could find nothing. It seemed to be nothing more than dirt and wind.

" _Rrgh_ , there doesn't appear to be danger at present," Dinobot told Bitten, "We should keep moving."

"Yes, Dinobot," Bitten nodded placidly as she changed into her robot mode for stealth.

Bitten snuck another look at Dinobot when she was certain he wouldn't see her. In the grass she had noticed something unusual about Dinobot that she hadn't paid much attention to since joining the Maximals. Specifically, the make of Dinobot's frame.

He and the other Maximals had bodies that mimicked the musculature of hominids and certain primates, specifically humans. All her life Bitten had seen mechs with bodies that were shaped in a specific way. Either square, circular, or triangular in the case of most femmes. Metal was shaped rigidly with no room for an organic feel or creativity. Dinobot, however, had curves all over his body. His arms had curves, his abdominal struts had bulges, his legs had muscular curves similar to his arms, and his face plate had a very sharp and cunning shape.

Bitten knew she should find this strange. By early Cybertronian standards he was a freak, a deviant with a realistic beast mode and a frame that looked like a naked reptile. Oddly enough though, she wasn't disgusted by his appearance. For some reason looking at Dinobot too long made her spark thrum faster and her frame feel hot. She wasn't sure what this was, but she knew he was the reason why.

As they continued on their silent patrol Bitten continued to sneak peaks at Dinobot and try to solve this strange puzzle in her mind. Now, the best way to determine her physical reaction was to determine everything she knew about Dinobot. He was a skilled warrior, he could be rude at times, he liked poetry from earth and Cybertron, his breath felt hot when he got too close and it kind of smelled like meat. His optics glowed an intense and alluring green when he used his sigma ability to shoot lasers out of his optics. His arms had those weird curves that would probably feel good if he wrapped them protectively around her frame-

Oh. Bitten gulped, suddenly aware of what was going on. Now, a human teenager might call this love, but Bitten knew better than that. Love was a deep and lasting feeling that one felt for their lover or bondmate. What Bitten felt was clearly a physical reaction and little else. It was lust.

 _Scrap. My first crush, and it's a colleague..._ Bitten thought with self-disdain.

She was concerned about how this feeling would affect her work performance. If she was too busy staring at Dinobot then the enemy could sneak up on them and she wouldn't even notice. Then again telling Dinobot to look less pretty so she could work sounded incredibly sexist. How would she feel if he said that to her? Well, probably flattered in this specific case, but that wasn't the point. What was she going to do? She had to focus!

Deciding to look in the opposite direction as Dinobot, she turned around and started walking backwards. She would just look for Predacons in this direction. As she backed up however Dinobot stopped for a moment, and Bitten proceeded to bump right into him; causing him to fall over on his face.

"Pfft!" Dinobot spat dirt out of his mouth before glaring daggers at the mortified femme, "Bitten! What is your problem?"

"I...was providing backup. LOL!" Bitten replied with a sheepish smile.

"Did you just make a joke?" Dinobot asked with an incredulous smirk, "I didn't know you knew how to do that."

"Dinobot...I need to tell you something," Bitten said haltingly, deciding to use the direct approach, "I am experiencing feelings of lust toward you."

"...What?" Dinobot asked, not sure he heard that right.

"I apologize, but I am physically attracted to you," Bitten replied matter-of-factly, "My frame feels hot whenever I look at you. My spark beats faster when I think of you. I fantasize about you sometimes. I am certain these feelings will go away on their own, but until then perhaps I should not work with you anymore. I do not want you to feel uncomfortable when you are trying to work."

"And this is supposed to help with that?" Dinobot asked, though there was slight amusement in his voice, "I must admit Bitten, I'm surprised you would tell me something like that. Frankly I'm surprised you opened your mouth to say anything at all."

"Do you dislike me for this?" Bitten asked in a monotone voice, though her face gave away her nervousness. It was odd to Dinobot how her vocal tones and facial expressions were rarely in sync. It was like she could only express herself one way or the other, never both.

Dinobot sighed and then said, "No, I don't hate you. You're young. It's only natural your systems play tricks on you sometimes. I've often noticed the way Cheetor stares at Black Arachnea, and she's a Predacon. Your feelings are perfectly normal. However, this isn't the time for feelings and therapy. We have work to do. Come on."

Bitten nodded and continued to follow him, all traces of their conversation gone. It was almost unnerving to Dinobot how Bitten betrayed nothing of her thoughts on her face unless she wanted to. That took a lot of discipline, but it also meant he couldn't tell what she was thinking. Bitten could've plotted his murder and he would never know.

However, when he thought about it, it kind of made sense that she was attracted to him. He had helped show her how to live among the Maximals. She had revealed secrets of her past to him that she had told no one else. He even sang for her! She had every reason to want him.

The odd part is Dinobot felt a little insulted. Not because she wanted him, but rather because she treated it like a virus. She had announced that she had feelings for him the same way one announces they have a coding issue or a paper cut. Like it was unwanted and temporary.

Why did he care, though? She was just some Maximal glitch that had an unhealthy obsession with wildlife. She was the one that lusted for him, yet he felt like he was the one that had been rejected. This was insane! It wasn't as if he actually wanted that creepy kangaroo in his berth. Right?

"Dinobot," Bitten suddenly pulled him from his tormented thoughts, "Are you attractive to other beast-formers?"

"Why do you ask?" Dinobot asked rather than answering.

"I am not familiar with current Cybertronian standards of beauty," Bitten replied, "Are you attractive to others of your kind?"

"It's hard to tell on yourself," Dinobot admitted, "However, I will say that I have been able to impress several Predacon femmes in my lifetime. I do not believe Maximal femmes would be so easily persuaded however. They don't tend to like scales and dominating personalities."

"Am I attractive?" Bitten then asked.

"What?" Dinobot muttered; not liking where this was going.

"I do not know," Bitten told him, "Like I said, I am not familiar with current trends and culture."

"Well...you are a Maximal, so my opinion might differ from those of your own kind," Dinobot warned her, "However, I would have to say you are average."

"I see," Bitten replied neutrally, "That seems fair."

"Well, I mean the whole package is average, but I suppose there are some features that are better than others," Dinobot added, fearing he might have offended the femme despite her lack of response, "Your frame is too small for a Predacon femme, but your delicate curves and slender servo look decent enough. I, um, I also like the way your audials twitch when you work. Your ears are probably the most expressive part about you. Well, that and your optics. They would be pretty if they weren't so unnerving. I would prefer sharper denta, but Maximals would find your flat denta attractive. Is my point clearer now?"

"Yes, Dinobot," Bitten replied using the same tone as if accepting an order.

Truth be told he hadn't divulged everything he felt, but this topic made him feel awkward. Love wasn't his specialty. Now, if she had asked him how to gut an enemy or how to hunt he would've been able to talk for hours, but this was just more than he wanted to handle.

Another point he had not told her was about her voice. Every phrase she said sounded lulling and comforting. Her voice had an almost musical quality to it, as if every syllable was a note in a song. Her tape deck ancestry were evident in her accent, and her singing was something he actually enjoyed listening to.

"We should go," Dinobot said gruffly, "There are no Predacons here and we need to get back to base."

"Yes, Dinobot," Bitten nodded and fell in step behind him.

They both started back the way they came, transforming into beast mode so the energon wouldn't damage their systems.

Dinobot would sneak glances at Bitten, and every time he did he noticed she was staring at him. This wasn't right. Predacons did not talk about feelings they refused to act on. This went against nature! A true Predacon wouldn't even start with a conversation. He would find a femme he desired, stroke her helm and back, and see if she responded positively. A purr meant yes and a punch meant no. Easy. Bitten was making this far too complicated, yet for some reason Dinobot wasn't sure what to do to make things simple again.

Did he like her? Did he want her? Would she use her sonic scream to fry his circuits in panic if he approached her? Was the risk worth it? Should he try it his way?

Dinobot snorted in frustration. He couldn't do that with Bitten. She wasn't a Predacon. Frankly she wasn't even a true Maximal. Maybe this blunt declaration of lust was how carrier hosts from ancient Cybertron courted each other. He realized then just how little he understood about the culture that had raised the Maximal's resident vet. He would have to do some research to figure out what to do, and then do some spark searching to figure out if he even wanted to pursue this at all.


	9. Spark Song

Chapter 9

Spark Song

Dinobot was worn out from sword training with Cheetor all morning in the hangar bay. Cheetor was decent with a gun, but the youngling's legs failed him time and again when he tried to dodge Dinobot's attacks. Dinobot had many years of experience, and his thrust was one of the best on Cybertron. He wished his Maximal comrades would learn how to better their own close combat techniques. In his opinion they relied far too heavily on their firearms.

As Dinobot entered his quarters he found himself drawn to the window, which held a perfect view of the animal sanctuary. Dinobot hated that his room was so close to those braying screeching animals, but there was nothing that could be done about it now. No one would trade quarters with him.

As Dinobot looked out the window he could see Bitten sitting beside an enclosure and petting Metronome, her beloved pet raven. He could barely see her, yet it was clear that she was content by her body language alone. She looked so young and so peaceful as she tenderly caressed her black bird. Dinobot found such a lack of awareness to be foolish. She could be attacked at any moment, yet she completely let her guard down!

Dinobot snorted as he walked away from the window and sat on his berth. Bitten was a foolish submissive femme with an unfathomable moral compass and an obsession with non-sentient animals. Her atitude was more like some mousy pre-war femme than the strong-willed soldiers of the Third Cybertronian War. He found her to be so infuriating, and yet...

It was impossible for Dinobot to deny that he had been thinking of her more ever since their awkward scouting mission together two weeks prior. Despite her passive nature she was a very powerful femme. She had a voice that could kill and spring-loaded legs that could break bones and struts alike. Her optics were both terrifying and mesmerizing; holding one's attention like the eyes of a cat or a cobra. Her voice was soft and soothing to Dinobot's war-weary audials, and her singing calmed him while at the same time annoying Rattrap. It was a perfect melody.

Dinobot shook his helm to try to banish the thoughts from his processor, but he just couldn't get rid of them. He couldn't deny that earth didn't exactly offer a wide range of femmes, and Dinobot also knew he was an outcast from Cybertron. In fact, it was very likely that he would never be able to return to his former home. He was a Predacon terrorist that had even abandoned his tiny sub-faction to join Maximals. No one would take him now. These Maximals were his only friends, and once they were able to return home he would be forced to remain alone forever on this mudball of a planet.

His pedes seemed to have a mind of their own as he was drawn once again to the window. Dinobot was surprised to find that Metronome was standing on the ledge of his window, and looking beyond the bird Dinobot could see that Bitten was holding her helm with her servo and opposite wrist; locked in a silent scream.

Dinobot jolted back, surprised that she looked so terrified. He couldn't tell if she was in pain or not, but he knew something was wrong. Without another thought he raced out of his room with sword in hand to see if he could help Bitten.

Dinobot made it outside and saw that Bitten was now lying flat on her back, still clutching her helm with her only servo and coolant streaming down her faceplates. She didn't even seem to notice him.

"Bitten! What's the matter with you?" Dinobot snapped, hiding his concern with forced anger.

Bitten didn't answer Dinobot, but she did turn her helm slightly to look at him. Her optics pleaded for help, but her vocalizer remained silent.

"Bitten! Get up! We need to get you to the CR chamber!" Dinobot insisted as he tried to lift her up.

Bitten screamed when he touched her, and Dinobot had to move away from her so her sonic blast didn't damage him. Thinking it over, Dinobot decided to try to lift her from behind so she couldn't aim her face at him. It was okay if his audials took a little damage as long as the blast itself wasn't aimed at him.

Dinobot lifted Bitten up by her armpits, but instead of the screaming he expected to hear it was only a light warble of pain. He lifted her legs up and carried her bridal style back to the ship. She didn't seem to respond, and he wondered what could've happened to her in such a short amount of time. She was fine a moment ago, but now she seemed almost catatonic.

* * *

Dinobot snarled and paced furiously as Rhinox checked the scans from the CR chamber. It would tell them what was wrong with Bitten and how long it would take to repair.

"Yeesh Chopperface, I haven't seen you this upset since I ate your last rack of ribs," Rattrap remarked in an effort to lighten the mood.

"Silence, rodent!" Dinobot growled dangerously, "I just don't understand. What happened to her? Have the Predacons invented a new long range weapon? Did she contract a virus? _What is this_!?"

Rhinox chose that moment to approach the group with his findings, but the look on his face was less than comforting. He looked utterly baffled.

"It's a weapon, isn't it?" Dinobot stated rather than asked.

"No," Rhinox replied, "I don't know what this is. According to the scan she's fine. Her spark is thrumming a little faster than usual, but that could just be a stress reaction. Her vitals are all normal and she has plenty of fuel in her systems. The CR won't activate because it doesn't detect anything wrong. We have to let her out."

"But that blasted machine didn't do anything!" Dinobot protested.

"Sorry, but until we know more we can't help her," Rhinox replied sadly.

Optimus Primal then opened the door to the CR chamber, and much to their surprise Bitten was able to walk out under her own power. She looked at each of them with a mildly curious expression, and that was the last straw for Dinobot.

" _Argh_! What is your malfunction, you glitch!?" Dinobot yelled at Bitten, "Do you have _any_ idea how worried we all were about you? You're wasting our resources when there isn't even anything wrong with you!"

"I..." Bitten began, paused, and then said, "I did not ask you to bring me here."

"That is no excuse!" Dinobot bellowed at her, "If there is something wrong with you, then you tell us! Now, what happened out there!?"

"My spark was..." Bitten looked down at the ground before continuing, something that surprised Dinobot given how much she loved to stare at people, "...reaching out. My spark wanted to find others. My guardian, my sisters, my symbiotes...I could not help it. They are all gone, and it is hard."

"I understand," Optimus replied comfortingly, "The emptiness is putting a strain on your systems. Don't worry, we'll be here to help you in any way we can. Perhaps if you ate something and got some rest."

"Thank you," Bitten replied softly.

Without looking at any of them Bitten walked to the elevator and punched in the floor where her room was. Bitten couldn't handle being in the same room with anyone at the moment. She didn't want to tell them anything. She didn't really feel emptiness, that was a lie. She felt injuries. Very old, very familiar injuries emanating from three very familiar members of her spark bond. She would keep it to herself, however. No sense giving potential enemies leverage on her.

* * *

Dinobot tried to recharge that night, but the events from earlier that day were wearing him down. He had been afraid of losing Bitten when she seized on the ground like that, looking up at him with pleading optics and silent screams. His spark lurched at the thought of never seeing her again, and that was when he realized something he had been loathe to admit: he was falling in love with Bitten.

He wanted her in his life, but he didn't know the appropriate way to tell her. He wasn't a romantic type, and even if he were a Predacon's idea of romance would probably differ from hers. He needed to know more before he could proceed.

Dinobot went to his computer and decided to look up dating rituals of Polyhexians in the Golden Age of Cybertron. It wasn't the exact time period Bitten lived in, but it was close enough and more likely to have benign records than the Third Cybertronian War era. He only hoped his search history wasn't monitored by anyone else on the ship.

The results were not what Dinobot had been hoping for. Apparently when a cassette host fell in love they made their intentions known by either writing or selecting a song that expressed how they felt about their love interest, and then playing it on their radio or singing it themselves.

 _More singing_... Dinobot thought bitterly. _Why does every nice thing I try to do for this femme lead back to singing_?

Dinobot growled softly to himself and wondered if finding a perfect song to describe Bitten was even worth the effort. When he imagined her hearing it, loving it, and then passionately kissing him he decided that yes, it was worth it.

A Polyhexian love song wasn't just a generic song saying they were love and it was wonderful. No, it would have to be something personal, something that expressed how Dinobot felt around Bitten and things that he admired about her. Polyhexian love songs were complex and detailed, usually going into everything from the first time a couple met to a psychological profile to the romantic partner's hobbies.

If Dinobot was going to bother finding a love song for Bitten then he would need to know more about her. The other Maximals had given up trying to figure out who she was months ago, so Dinobot would have to pick up where they left off. He started by typing in Bitten's name into the Third War era database.

Nothing. There was nothing there, no femme named Bitten. Dinobot clenched his fist, but he couldn't exactly say he was surprised. She seemed like the kind of femme that would give a fake name to her rescuers. So, what did he actually know about her?

He knew that Bitten was quiet, that she loved animals, that she had close ties to some famous historical Autobots as well as first hand knowledge of the creation of the Maximals-

That was it. Bitten had given a name of someone she used to know! Dinobot remembered her story about her best friend Honey Venom. Perhaps if Dinobot could find Honey Venom in the historical records, then he could find the true identity of Bitten and therefore know how best to get her to fall for him.

Dinobot typed in the name Honey Venom, but what he found was surprisingly little. According to the records, Honey Venom was an Autobot and the adopted daughter of a scientist named Skyfire. She had been reported as killed after a failed battle against the Decepticons aboard the Nemesis 1. She was logged as a beast-former and there were no photos available in the public record. For someone that supposedly ushered in the beast age, she sure didn't get any recognition for her efforts.

Dinobot felt that he had hit a wall, but if Honey Venom was real then he had to be on the right trail. He searched for other family members of Honey Venom and Skyfire. Skyfire had creators in the Golden Age, but neither one survived past the beginning of the war. Honey Venom had no known relatives.

Thinking harder about this, Dinobot decided to search for records of the battle where Honey Venom was killed and see if Bitten had been there. Apparently it wasn't so much an official battleground as it was Honey Venom and two other Autobots infiltrating the Nemesis against Optimus Prime's orders. According to the records a seeker named Quantum Boom had lost her frame in the attack, but her spark had ghosted outside the atmosphere until her frame was replaced.

"Quantum Boom..." Dinobot whispered, "Q-Boom. Bitten had mentioned this name. That was the frame she handed over to Waspinator. So, these two femmes were friends of Bitten. I'm getting closer..."

He continued reading, and found out besides Honey Venom there had been one other casualty; a sparkling femme named Terrabyte. Dinobot wondered why an adult femme would take a sparkling into battle, and decided to do some research on Terrabyte.

Terrabyte had been the adopted daughter of a famous Autobot frontliner named Sunstreaker, one half of the notorious "twins"; a set of split sparks that somehow made it to adulthood. Terrabyte had been the daughter of known Decepticon saboteur Zetabyte and a Decepticon grunt officer named Tug. Besides her adoption and death not much was known about this femmeling. Dinobot searched for photos of the sparkling, and he found that only two existed in the public record.

The first one he clicked on wasn't a photo at all, but rather a painting that hung in the Iacon Museum of Classical Art. It was from their Third Era exhibit, a black and white charcoal piece painted by Sunstreaker during his post-war period. It was a sad looking little femme holding a dead rose to her chest as wind whipped around her still frame. What caught Dinobot's attention however wasn't just the haunting gaze of the subject, but the one place where it wasn't drawn in charcoal. The optics, large and glittery yellow, had apparently been painted using Sunstreaker's own body paint. Those optics looked just like Bitten's.

Dinobot felt a chill as he read the description. The artwork had apparently been drawn when Sunstreaker had gone through a depression following the murder of his sparkling at Megatron's servos. The dead rose represented their broken spark bond, and Sunstreaker was quoted as saying he would have nightmares of the sparkling staring at him from beyond the grave. According to records the twins never fought again, and eventually Sunstreaker and Sideswipe offlined due to starvation from lack of energon on the planet Gorr.

Despite the cold chill Dinobot felt at reading those words, he still clicked on the second known reference to Terrabyte. It was a private family photo that was in the public domain after the death of the twins. In the photo the sparkling stared at the camera while sitting in Sunstreaker's lap. Sunstreaker was yelling at Sideswipe, who was off to the side of the shot sticking his glossa out and wiggling his digits. Overall it looked chaotic, all except for the passive almost sad looking sparkling looking at the camera and thus the viewer.

"It's her," Dinobot whispered to himself, "That has to be Bitten. No one else looks that haunted, that piercing."

He finally knew who she really was, but he didn't really know what to do with that information. Everything he learned about Bitten felt less like a love song and more like a dirge. Everyone in her own time period assumed she had died, and there was no way to tell them otherwise. These were events from his past, yet this planet's future. Was it set in stone, or could Bitten change her destiny? Even if she could, did he want her to? Could they even be lovers if she tried to get back to her own time? He doubted it.

* * *

The next day Dinobot still felt confused and tired from the previous night's research. All he wanted was a song to court that blasted kangaroo, and instead he finds a tale of loss and spark break. The painting he had seen had been despairing and dark, yet the one that haunted Dinobot more was the supposedly happy family photo. Even there Bitten, no Terrabyte, had looked so...haunted. She looked resigned to a fate she didn't want, and yet Dinobot didn't understand what that meant.

As Dinobot made his way to the elevator he noticed that Bitten was standing there waiting for the same lift. She saw him coming, and started walking toward him. He wondered if she could read the apprehension on his face.

"Dinobot," Bitten addressed him with the same detachment as always, but her look was intense, "I have something for you."

"You got me a gift?" Dinobot asked, "It better not be a pet. I'm not taking on your responsibilities."

"No. I found a song in the earth archives," Bitten replied stoically, "I want you to listen to it, and tell me what you think."

Dinobot raised an optic ridge, intrigued. He wondered if this meant what he thought it meant. Perhaps her lust was starting to turn into something...deeper. Then again it could be nothing of the sort. He would just have to find out for himself.

Dinobot took the sound chip from Bitten to listen to what song she wanted him to hear, but much to his dismay it was an archaic earth pop song.

 _If you wanna be with me_

 _Baby there's a price to pay_

 _I'm a genie in a bottle_

 _You gotta rub me the right way_

 _If you wanna be with me_

 _I can make your wish come true_

 _Just come and set me free baby_

 _And I'll be with you_

"Yuck!" Dinobot exclaimed sourly, "You actually _like_ this garbage?"

"No, I don't," Bitten replied unperturbed, "That's not the point. It's my spark song."

Spark song? Dinobot had seen that phrase pop up during his research on Polyhexians. This was what Dinobot had been trying to come up with all night, and as it turned out Bitten had the same idea. He listened to the lyrics again, and began to understand. A genie was a powerful being in mythology that was at the beckon call of whoever was able to release them from their prison. This song likened that myth to a conditional sort of romantic love. So that meant...

"You're saying this song is our song?" Dinobot asked for clarification.

"If you want it to be," Bitten replied bashfully.

"Why did you choose this one?" Dinobot asked, though he felt like he probably already knew.

"Because I feel more than love for you, I feel loyalty," Bitten replied, "You earned that loyalty by your actions and your honesty. You don't _say_ you care about me, you just do. So...is this...our song?"

Dinobot couldn't hold back anymore. He scooped her up in his arms and sniffed her helm. She stiffened for a moment, and he feared he had misjudged the situation, but then he felt her arms wrap around him and her helm rest on his chassis. He breathed in her scent and worked the tips of his claws into the seams of her lower spinal strut's armor.

He knew her secrets, and he knew her weaknesses. In that moment however that knowledge felt irrelevant. For the first time in ages he was in the company of an honorable femme that wanted him as much as he wanted her, and he was going to allow himself to enjoy this moment.

* * *

 _Author's Notes: This time I decided to put the author's notes on the bottom. Anyway, this chapter had some vague planning, though I think some of the better parts of it were spontaneous. I have big plans for this story, though admittedly I think it's been a slow climb so far. Not to worry though, we'll get back on track in the next chapter. Also, I actually do dislike that song up there, but it fit Bitten's character and the timeframe she was on earth too well to not use. Also, the family portrait mentioned in the fic really exists on deviantart, but I'm not guaranteeing it's good ^_^'_


	10. The Truce

_Author's Notes: I just wanna give a shoutout to **EmeraldDragonFlame12** on DeviantArt for her lovely picture of Bitten as well as two comics depicting scenes from this story! Seriously, that is amazing! I love it when people draw artwork based off my fics! As for this chapter, I feel like it's all over the place. The latter part of the chapter has been planned out for months, but the larger part of the chapter at the beginning was rather spontaneous. I hope this turned out well, and thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this fic thus far :)_

* * *

Chapter 10

The Truce

After proclaiming their intentions to have a steady relationship, Dinobot and Bitten had agreed to keep their romantic involvement with each other a secret until they were sure this was a permanent arrangement. For the most part they tried to pretend everything was normal between them, but it was hard to miss how much time Dinobot was spending around the rescue pens; a place he thoroughly detested.

On the outside Bitten looked the same, but inside her spark felt an excitement it had never felt before. She had been sure her lust for the brooding mech would lead to nothing more than physical attraction, but for some reason his personality likewise drew her in. He was tough, well spoken, honorable, passionate, and mature. Not to mention handsome. Bitten still couldn't believe someone like him was interested in someone as broken and repressed as her.

Dinobot was sure he was acting like an idiot whenever he hid his feelings from his comrades or became defensive about a remark aimed toward Bitten. Tenderness wasn't Dinobot's strong suit, and he still had trouble knowing what to do about his newfound love. The primal, more beastly part of him wanted to take Bitten somewhere dark and claim her, but the more civilized part of him felt repulsed by those thoughts. She was his coworker, despite whatever relationship they may have besides that, and she didn't exactly seem like the type to be interested in wild ideas. He had never dated a non-Predacon before, and he didn't know what the rules were for such a thing.

The other Maximals noticed Dinobot's growing frustration. He seemed even more on edge than usual, and the only thing that seemed to calm him down was a trip to the vet clinic outside the ship. Some were sure that Bitten was feeling differently as well, but she rarely left the clinic to socialize so it was harder to tell.

Airazor was getting tired of dealing with Dinobot's snarling and bad attitude, and she was also curious about Bitten's feelings about Dinobot. So, with this thought in mind, Airazor made a visit to the sanctuary.

When Airazor arrived she saw that Bitten was bottle feeding a baby monkey and the raven was still on her shoulder. Bitten didn't look at Airazor or acknowledge her, so the falcon-former cleared her vocalizer to get Bitten's attention. Bitten didn't look at her, but her ear inclined in Airazor's direction to indicate she was listening.

"Bitten, I think we need to talk about Dinobot," Airazor stated without preamble.

"Yes, Airazor," Bitten replied dutifully as she continued to feed the baby monkey.

"Bitten, I think I know what's going on, but I want to hear the full story from you," Airazor began uncertainly, "It seems like Dinobot is in love with you."

"He is," Bitten replied matter-of-factly.

"Oh, so you've noticed how much he hangs around you," Airazor surmised, "What do you plan to do about it?"

Bitten looked at her then, and carefully set the baby monkey back onto its soft bed with the blue blanket. Bitten's eyes held a look of curiosity, and Airazor wasn't sure how to proceed with this conversation. Bitten didn't seem interested in answering her question, but Airazor had to know whether or not Dinobot was bothering Bitten with his frequent attention.

"What I mean is Bitten…" Airazor fumbled for words for a moment, but finally said, "Do you return his affections?"

"I do," Bitten stated matter-of-factly.

"Oh. I have to say I'm a little surprised," Airazor commented, "I didn't think any sane femme could love Dinobot."

"What do you mean?" Bitten asked.

"It's just that...I've known Dinobot my entire life, and he's always seemed self-serving and abrasive. He'll do whatever he can to win, and he doesn't care who he hurts. He's mean, he complains about everything, and he used to be a Predacon. What could you possibly see in that mech?"

"His spark," Bitten replied simply, but when Airazor didn't seem to understand she added, "War does terrible things to a mech, Airazor. You have seen a tiny slice of war here on this planet, but Dinobot has lived in a constant state of alert his entire life. Predacons were trained to believe they were merely machines of war. In a way, I suppose Dinobot is more like his ancestors than he realizes."

"His ancestors?" Airazor asked curiously.

"Dinobot was based off the original 5 Dinobots on board the Ark," Bitten explained, "They were created merely to be machines of war as well. Optimus Prime would sometimes keep them locked in their room when he feared them getting out of control with regular Autobots. They had the processors of sparklings, but the bodies of monsters. They understood they were weapons to be used. Swoop told my sister Q-Boom something once that she then told me."

"And what was that?" Airazor asked.

Bitten's look became haunted as she answered with "Swoop said if the war ended that the Prime planned to put the Dinobots into stasis lock. They had no place in regular society. I do not know what happened to them after I entered the time vortex. I just know that living with an expiration date and a command to kill messes with one's mind."

"Dinobot isn't like them," Airazor asserted, "He could be so much more than that. Predacons aren't freaks. Optimus Primal says they inhabit nearly a third of Cybertron. Dinobot is a normal citizen of our planet."

"He was," Bitten said heavily, "Until he joined the Maximals."

"I know," Airazor whispered ruefully, "I'm sorry I brought it up. I know he gave up a lot to be here. It's just...he's a jerk."

"I know," Bitten replied, a small smile gracing her features, "I'm used to dealing with people like him."

"Tigatron would never treat me the way Dinobot treats you though," Airazor observed, "Tigatron is kind and supportive, and has taught me to love and appreciate nature. Dinobot belittles everything about you, from your choice of beast mode to your choice of occupation. No matter what you do or say it seems like he yells at you or makes a snide remark. Why would you put up with that?"

"For the same reason he puts up with me," Bitten replied, "He is not perfect, and I am not perfect. We cannot wait around for perfect partners to find us. We fit each other, and that's all that matters."

"Do you miss Cybertron?" Airazor asked, changing the subject, "I've never seen it myself. Is it as beautiful as the others claim it is?"

"When I last saw it? No," Bitten replied bluntly, "Cybertron is, or rather was, a dying husk. I can live here just as easily."

Bitten then laid down on the ground and stared up at the sky, hoping Airazor would get the message and leave. Bitten thought of Airazor as a good friend, but socializing always tired Bitten out, and she wasn't used to talking a lot. She wanted to end the conversation, but didn't know any other way to do so than to stop talking and ignore Airazor.

"Do you plan to date Dinobot?" Airazor asked; clearly not getting the message.

"Yes," Bitten replied curtly, feeling it best to keep her answers short.

"What if he wants to interface with you?" Airazor asked.

Bitten didn't reply then, seeing as this wasn't a yes or no question. She was too worn out to keep up this topic of conversation, but didn't know how to explain without hurting Airazor's feelings.

"Will you let him?" Airazor asked conspiratorially, and then realized what a gossip she sounded like, "Oh, what am I saying? You two aren't even dating yet. It's too soon to talk about this, right?"

No answer.

"Um...okay then. I guess I should get back inside," Airazor stammered awkwardly, "I've got work to do. I, um...I hope whatever happens you and Dinobot can both find a way to be happy, whether it's with each other or not."

With those words Airazor transformed into falcon mode and flew back to the ship. Bitten just stayed where she was and looked up at the sky. She thought about the question regarding interfacing. Bitten was Polyhexian, and they didn't believe in interfacing before bonding. Oddly enough they were fine with symbiote sparklings before bonding, but not romantic partners. She wondered how Dinobot would handle such information. He didn't seem like the patient type, but then again she could be wrong. She would just have to wait and see.

* * *

That night Bitten and Dinobot were in the cargo bay eating dinner together for a covert date. They sat across from each other and said little to each other at first. Dinobot had guard duty there and Bitten was always busy doing her own thing, so no one was suspicious. Bitten wasn't even sure why she and Dinobot were still keeping their romance a secret, but she felt it prudent and so did he, so they continued sneaking away to be together.

Their dinner wasn't anything fancy, just some wildebeest for Dinobot and a salad for Bitten. She found that with her kangaroo alt mode her new taste sensors preferred plants as opposed to meat. She saw Airazor eat fish and Primal eat insects before, which seemed reasonable. What was absurd was that Rattrap frequently ate other Maximals' garbage and leftovers. That was just disgusting.

"Bitten, have you considered my offer to train you to use your screech attack more effectively in battle?" Dinobot asked in between bites.

"I have, but I am not certain you could teach me," Bitten replied indifferently, "You do not possess this power, so how would you know how best I should use it? After all, I do not know how to teach you to improve your optical laser attack."

"It's not about your specific sigma ability," Dinobot clarified, "It's about how comfortable you are using it. You don't fight well. You're powerful, but undisciplined. You would be crushed in a real fight against an opponent who knew what they were doing. What if you should be ambushed by Megatron or by Tarantulas? Even Inferno is a better fighter than you, and I'm fairly sure he's insane."

"Insanity doesn't equal stupidity," Bitten pointed out, "Well, I suppose I could learn how to fight from you. There is also something else I feel you are qualified to teach me."

"And what is that?" Dinobot asked before ripping another chunk of meat from the carcass.

"I want you to kiss me," Bitten replied in a deceptively casual tone.

Dinobot stopped chewing in that moment and stared at Bitten with the most hilarious expression of puzzlement. She didn't back down from his gaze, she rarely did anymore, and she restated her point.

"I don't know how to kiss," Bitten explained, "I want you to teach me."

"You want me to be your first kiss?" Dinobot asked just to make sure.

"I don't mind if you are," Bitten replied, "If our relationship is to go anywhere, then I need to be more comfortable with you. Just stay in robot mode though. I'm not ready to kiss a lizard just yet."

Dinobot chuckled and stepped away from his dinner to sit next to Bitten, and she scooted a little on the crate she was sitting on so he could join her. Suddenly Bitten felt embarrassed that she had asked Dinobot to do this, and she turned her helm away so he wouldn't see the bashful look on her faceplate.

"Bitten, you have to face me if we are going to kiss," Dinobot pointed out as if it should be obvious to her.

Bitten was starting to get nervous, but she wanted this so she knew it was too late to back out. She slowly turned her helm to face Dinobot, and Dinobot took her face in both his servos. His plating felt so warm and powerful, the tension in his muscles clear to her. He was nervous too. Of course, he dealt with it better than she did.

"Alright then, in order for us to kiss you turn your head slightly so that your nose and my nose don't obstruct our lip components. Then we just lean into each other until our lips meet. Our bodies will know what to do then."

Bitten feared her body would instruct her to faint or push him away, but she didn't want to voice this wayward thought. Bitten gradually leaned closer to Dinobot, and he leaned forward with more confidence; clearly having done this before at some point. When their lips met Dinobot leaned into her and held her body close to his. The pressure increased as his mouth opened and his teeth gently nipped at her lips. She wasn't sure she liked this, yet there was another part of her that didn't want to pull away. It was terribly confusing, and the moment was only about to get worse.

Just as they were deep into their make-out session the doors to the cargo bay opened and Tigatron entered, catching them just as Dinobot quickly pulled away from Bitten.

"Um...am I interrupting something?" Tigatron asked awkwardly.

"Obviously," Bitten replied sourly, feeling more willing to share her thoughts due to her foul mood.

"What do you want?" Dinobot snapped, clearly as upset as Bitten at being caught in an intimate moment.

"Optimus wants us all in the control room," Tigatron announced, "He has just returned from a meeting with Megatron. I don't know what happened, but it must have been big. He sounded very insistent."

Bitten stood up and nodded her acquiescence to her duty while Dinobot roughly grabbed his sword from the ground and pushed past Tigatron. It wasn't that he was upset with Tigatron personally, but when a Predacon initiated heat protocols it forced the mech or femme into an aggressive state to protect their territory and mate. Bitten didn't know this, but she also didn't care. She knew their activities could wait until another time.

* * *

"A Truce!?" Rattrap asked incredulously to Primal and the assembled group, "Oh, for bootin' up cold!"

Yes, Megatron's meeting had been about calling a truce to the Beast Wars. Bitten knew this wasn't the great peacemaker's gesture that it seemed to be however. When she lived in the foundling home her friend Honey Venom had explained that a treaty meant a war was over and a truce meant a temporary ceasefire to see if the two sides could resolve their issues. This was a truce. It was temporary. The Predacons had no intention of truly suing for peace.

"I cannot believe you agreed to this!" Dinobot snapped, and Bitten shook her head to show her support for his viewpoint.

"What could I do? He was right," Primal replied helplessly, "I'm a Maximal. I have to give peace a chance; no matter how unlikely it seems."

"Hm..." Rhinox stroked his chin in thought, "Do you think this has something to do with that alien energy anomaly?"

"Anomaly?" Bitten asked quietly so only Dinobot could hear.

"I'll tell you later," Dinobot hissed to keep her quiet on the matter.

"It's got to," Primal replied to Rhinox's query, "Megatron's found something. Something that has him so worried he doesn't even want to _think_ about us.

"Ey, I'm insulted," Rattrap joked.

"Well in that case we better find out what it is," Cheetor suggested.

Optimus Primal apparently thought Cheetor was onto something, and was willing to take it one step further. He was cooking up a plan in his processor, and if his sly stare was any indicator that plan involved Rattrap. Rattrap also picked up on that look, and was quick to do his best to put a screeching halt to that train of thought.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Rattrap exclaimed as he held his hands up to try to ward off his fate, "You mean I gotta infiltrate that Pred base _again_!?"

"That might be a truce violation," Rhinox pointed out, and Rattrap looked relieved that he might not have to go after all.

"Not if he's unarmed," Cheetor debated, and Rattrap would've strangled the youngling if he could get away with it.

"Thanks a slaggin' aft full, Pussycat!" Rattrap groused.

"The vermin is right," Dinobot surprisingly came to Rattrap's defense, "Megatron will surely anticipate this move."

"So...let him," Primal replied impishly.

Bitten was surprised by how youthful and almost mischievous Primal could be when he had an idea. She was starting to see how he and Rattrap could've been best friends since sparklinghood. She could also see how this ape was clearly one of Honey Venom's sons. He had to be an original model from Honey Venom's collection. Bitten just didn't know how to prove it yet.

* * *

After the plan had been explained Bitten had been surprised at her involvement. Normally the Maximals didn't count on her for anything, but this time she had a part to play, and wasn't sure she wanted to play it.

Bitten stood near the Darksyde with Tigatron, waiting for Rattrap and Airazor to show up to distract the Predacons. Both were in beast mode so they wouldn't be detected by the sensors. Once Megatron's forces and automatic sentries were occupied the duo would covertly enter the ship and snoop around to find out what Megatron was up to. This truce had to have an explanation, and whatever it was it was likely to be bad.

Neither Maximal said anything to each other. Spying required absolute silence and readiness, something Bitten was perfectly fine with. She considered Tigatron a friend, but that didn't mean she felt like having a conversation. For some reason she found herself constantly justifying in her own mind not wanting to talk to her own friends. That thought made her feel like an aft.

Suddenly, the turrets and sentries activated and were shooting at Airazor and Rattrap. That was the signal, so Tigatron disabled the locking mechanism on the door and went inside, with Bitten following close behind.

/I hope Airazor will be alright,/ Tigatron sighed over the comm, /I know Rattrap is a survivor, but Airazor tends to take unnecessary risks. I wish we had been allowed to work together on this./

/We are both members of the team that rarely get involved,/ Bitten pointed out, /The Predacons won't look for us./

The spies went past the cargo hangar and into the ill-lit hallways of the Darksyde. Everything was quiet and the halls were empty, something both Maximals were grateful for. There was one problem however...

"Hm, these black walls don't mix with us white animals," Tigatron whispered, "We'll have to be careful."

Tigatron went ahead and looked both ways to see if any Predacons were lurking about. When the coast was clear he used his head to motion for Bitten to follow him. Bitten transformed into robot mode before following, fearing hopping around in her kangaroo mode would be too noisy.

As they made their way through the ship Bitten suddenly had another flare up of unbearable spark pain! She managed to not scream but still clutched her chassis as she waited for the pain to go away. She was sure she knew what this pain was. It was not even her own suffering, yet she was forced to endure it. This was a most inconvenient time to be plagued by spark bonds that should have been dormant.

As the pain finally subsided after a few minutes Bitten looked up to see that Tigatron wasn't there. He had likely not known she was in distress and went on without her. Bitten decided to follow the path and catch up with him rather than risk further comm contact when she might not be in a good physical position to encrypt the signal.

As Bitten walked along the black hallways she noticed that the paths converged into four separate directions; including the one she came from. She didn't know whether Tigatron turned left, turned right, or went straight ahead. Bitten looked at each path, but there were no answers. She finally decided to go right and hope that was the way Tigatron took.

She silently skulked about, keeping close to the walls and listening for any signs of Predacon activity. Most of the rooms she came across were locked, and there was still no sign of Tigatron. 5 minutes turned into 10, which turned into 20. Bitten was hopelessly lost, but she wasn't willing to call Tigatron yet. Her spark was still hurting and she feared trying to use any of her equipment in a compromised state while sneaking around in enemy territory.

As Bitten passed a room that was open she heard two Predacons talking with each other. Never one to pass up the chance to gather intel, Bitten slunk into the room and crouched down low as she walked/crawled to a nearby desk to hide.

The Predacons were the two spiders, Tarantulas and Blackarachnia if Bitten remembered correctly. Blackarachnia was flirting with Tarantulas, and seemed to be discussing a plan to leave the Predacons. Were they defecting? That seemed unlikely. Bitten continued to silently watch and listen in case she found something that could be of value to her team.

"Well then why don't we go together, partner?" Blackarachnia lilted as she draped her arms around Tarantulas, "Leave Megatron and the others to rot. At least we'll be safe when the aliens come for this planet."

Aliens? Bitten remembered the others discussing something along those lines, but Dinobot never elaborated on what was going on. This warranted further investigation.

"And how do I know you're telling the truth?" Tarantulas asked accusingly, "For all I know you could ruin my escape plans!"

"Now why would I do that?" Blackarachnia asked seductively, "After all, what has Megatron ever done for _me_?"

As she spoke these words there was a barely audible moaning sound at her pedes, and the spider-former looked down at the offending object and kicked it behind the desk where Bitten was still hiding.

"Now, where were we?" Blackarachnia asked suggestively.

Bitten looked down at what had been kicked her way, and was surprised to see two large lavender optics staring back at her. It was Waspinator's helm, and he was still conscious!

"Hoppy Bo-? _Mph_!" Waspinator exclaimed before Bitten wrapped her arm around his mouth.

Bitten looked back to see if the spiders had discovered her, and was relieved to see them still engrossed in each other. She didn't even take the time to breathe a sigh of relief before crawling out of the room with Waspinator's head secured in her arm. Once they were out in the hallway, Bitten readjusted the helm so that Waspinator could look up at her.

"What'z the big idea, Hoppy Bot?" Waspinator spat in derision.

"Where is your body?" Bitten asked softly so that no one else would hear.

" _Why_?" Waspinator asked suspiciously.

"I will take you to your CR chamber," Bitten explained, "However, I will expect a favor in return."

"Of courze you will," Waspinator replied dryly, "Fine, Wazzpinator accepts Hoppy Bot'z termz."


	11. Staring Into An Echo

_Author's Notes: For whatever reason this fic seems to be the one I've been the most reliable about updating lately. Don't know why that is, but either way this chapter is one I've been wanting to write for a while. It's nice when a story comes together. Thank you for reading, and please favorite and review :)_

* * *

Chapter 11

Staring Into An Echo

Bitten had to go to the control room on the lower level to retrieve Waspinator's body, and when she finally found it carrying it was heavy, but she somehow managed to transport Waspinator's pieces to the CR chamber. She knew she could leave as soon as he was safely inside, but she decided to sit and wait for him anyway. Part of it was concern for his well being, and the other part was wanting to collect her debt. With those thoughts in mind her decision to stay with him was an easy one.

It took almost an hour for Waspinator to be restored, and Bitten was certain that she should have contacted Tigatron in that time, but she was afraid of being discovered. If he needed assistance he could contact her, so she was sure everything was fine. To occupy her time Bitten scanned through the database to see if she could find anything that would be useful to the Maximals.

As she perused the various sections of the unencrypted portions of the Darksyde's records she came across a history text called 'From Decepticons to Predacons: A History of Great Leaders'. Bitten remembered fondly how Honey Venom loved to read military history, and how sometimes Honey Venom could be convinced to read her books as a bedtime story to her fellow orphans. Bitten loved those quiet moments, and as she looked at the title of the text she felt a longing for those oppressive yet simpler times.

She opened the file and started reading. Of course it was no surprise that the first third of the text was about Megatron (the first one). Bitten didn't feel like reading this part since Honey Venom had read so much about the warlord to her already. So, she decided to find out who came after Megatron.

She had expected to see Starscream, but was surprised to find the seeker had been killed at his own coronation by a mech named Galvatron. It served Starscream right as far as Bitten was concerned. Starscream had murdered Skyfire, who was not only his former best friend but also Honey Venom's mentor. If Starscream had never done that then Honey Venom would have never sought revenge and been killed by Megatron.

The chapter on Galvatron detailed a sharp fall from grace for the Decepticons. The new leader had been powerful to a degree unmatched before him, but had also been driven insane by a corrupted hard drive. He would attack his own mechs indiscriminately, had an insatiable bloodlust, and a hatred for Autobots that was downright infamous. He apparently also had a drinking problem and had a bad habit of invading the personal space of others.

Bitten could find humor in this since Galvatron was long dead and the Decepticons were no more. He sounded like quite a character, and perhaps someone Bitten might study up on when she could find the time. She downloaded the file of the entire text for later and went to check on Waspinator.

When Bitten opened the door to the CR chamber Waspinator stumbled out and held his helm while moaning in pain. Once he managed to get his bearings he noticed that Bitten was staring at him intently. That stare was creepy enough to the Maximals, but it was twice as unsettling for a Predacon.

"Zo, what waz the favor?" Waspinator asked, sounding more confident than he felt about this unknown element.

"I need to go somewhere," Bitten explained, "I want you to fly me there, and tell no one of the location where we are going."

"That zounds like a Maximal trap!" Waspinator replied suspiciously.

"No, it is not," Bitten replied matter-of-factly, "In fact, the Maximals also must not know of this location. It is my secret, and it will soon be yours. Tell anyone my secret, and I will kill you. I don't want to. I've never killed before. However, this matter is of utmost importance."

"Then why truzt me?" Waspinator inquired in confusion.

"Because I doubt you would do anything to harm your own carrier," Bitten replied cryptically, "We should leave now, while both sides are distracted."

Waspinator didn't like the sound of this. He imagined a homicidal white kangaroo taking him someplace remote and then shooting him in the helm. Then again, she healed him. Why go to the trouble of saving him just to hurt him again? That sounded like the sort of insane thing Tarantulas would do, but that hardly seemed like Maximal reasoning.

Deciding that he didn't have all that much to lose, Waspinator agreed to fulfill his debt and fly Bitten to wherever it was she wanted to go. Besides, at this point he was curious to see what wa so special that even Optimus Primal would be denied such information.

* * *

"What iz thiz thing?" Waspinator asked as he stared up at the large mangled heap before him.

Bitten and Waspinator had flown for over an hour to get to a peninsula that looked like it was almost ready to break apart from the rest of the continent. When Bitten ordered Waspinator to land he didn't know what to expect. He still wasn't sure what this was, only that it was black and grey, had decimated wings, and had crashed on this planet. It was probably a shuttle, but Waspinator wasn't sure if it was a mere transport or-

"AHHH!" Waspinator screamed as he came across what looked like a half-transformed face coming out of the crumpled vessel, "Wazzpinator not like thiz anymore! Wazzpinator wantz to go home!"

Bitten hopped around to where the giant green wasp was buzzing around. She looked into the lifeless faceplate, and her expression became distant. Waspinator noted how intimate this moment seemed for the kangaroo, and he realized that not only was this giant heap a Cybertronian, but it was someone Bitten knew.

"Who waz he?" Waspinator asked, trying to sound sympathetic.

"Her name was Tearjerker," Bitten replied mournfully, "She was my caretaker in the foundling home where I ended up after the murder of my parents. She is not why we are here."

"Then what are we doing here, Hoppy Bot?" Waspinator asked irritably.

"They are dying," Bitten said vaguely as she made her way to the nearest entrance and into the dead shuttle-former.

Bitten transformed before stepping inside Tearjerker's frame. Waspinator didn't want to go inside a dead body, but he also didn't want to be left outside alone. He had already defied Megatron by aiding a Maximal and didn't want to get caught by a fellow Predacon while helping the enemy. They might've officially had a truce, but Waspinator knew Megatron wanted the Maximals dead if an opportunity arose. Megatron would be so angry if he knew Waspinator was showing kindness to the marsupial femme. Reluctantly Waspinator flew into the open doorway to join Bitten.

Waspinator transformed into robot mode and looked for Bitten. The room was very dark since there were no windows, so Waspinator turned on his night vision. It proved to be unnecessary as Bitten found a flashlight under a console and turned it on. The light hurt Waspinator's optics with his night vision on, and he screamed in agony before turning it off.

"Not funny, Hoppy Bot!" Waspinator snapped once he was close enough to her.

Bitten wasn't paying attention to Waspinator, however. She was looking down at the mass on the floor in front of her. Waspinator wasn't sure what he was looking at for a few seconds, but then he saw more heads and limbs and it clicked. _Cybertronians_. There were four ancient Cybertronian femmes tangled together in a protective bundle; all in stasis lock. They were the size of a normal Predacon, but the designs were clearly old.

"Miniconz?" Waspinator guessed.

"Sparklings," Bitten corrected, "Their sparks are giving out under the pressure of their injuries. They are dying."

"How did you know?" Waspinator asked.

"Three of them are my sisters, more or less," Bitten told him, "We were all in the same orphan gang. That gold one is Honey Venom, the dark blue seeker is Quantum Boom, and the black and grey-blue car-former is Phobia."

"Who iz the white-?" Waspinator started to ask, but then he realized he already knew.

Waspinator turned to Bitten and looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. She said Quantum Boom was his carrier, but here she was, a sparkling. If Bitten could be in an orphan gang with ancients, that meant...

"You weren't alwayz a Maximal, were you?" Waspinator put the pieces together, "You were an ancient. Thiz zparkling iz you, izn't it? You are dying."

"I feel their pain in my spark," Bitten lamented, "I cannot save them. I do not know how. However, I will not let them die alone. We are family, and we shall die together. Thank you for bringing me here, Waspinator. I am sorry, but you will die too. No Q-Boom means no Waspinator."

"What!?" Waspinator exclaimed in shock, "Mommy Bot iz dying? But how!? She iz not from thiz world, wherever thiz world iz. She can't die! We muzt zave her!"

"I cannot treat people, only organics," Bitten replied ruefully.

"Wait, Wazzpinator haz an idea!" Waspinator exclaimed triumphantly despite nothing happening yet, "Your people knew nothing of zpark trazfusion, right?"

Bitten just looked at him in blank confusion.

"Well, we can uze our zparkz to revitalize the zparkz of the baby botz," Waspinator explained, "We juzt need a link cable and zomething to monitor our energy levelz."

Bitten didn't understand the exact science, but she understood Waspinator needed a link cable and a spark rate monitor. She could easily find the former within the dead shuttle, but the monitor was something she didn't have. She found the cable for Waspinator, but informed him that they had no way to tell if what they were doing was working.

"Well then, ztay cloze by," Waspinator instructed, "You zaid you could feel their zparkz, right?"

"Yes, Waspinator," Bitten nodded.

"Well then, you tell Wazzpinator if the tranzfusion is working," Waspinator ordered.

Bitten agreed and they started working on the first spark. Waspinator attached his spark to Q-Boom while Bitten attached her spark to Honey Venom. A more rational person probably would have saved their own past self first, but Bitten's devotion to her best friend remained despite the time and space that had passed. She only hoped that what she and Waspinator were doing was working.

* * *

Optimus Primal could not believe the position he was in, figuratively and literally. He was strapped to steel cables by his hands and feet and hanging from mid-air by a coil that had just popped up out of the floor. He was inside the alien structure they had found, and had ordered Rattrap and Airazor to leave it while he tried to broker peace between the Maximals and the aliens that ruled this mysterious planet.

The plan unfortunately wasn't going so well. Not only was Primal being held hostage by the aliens, but after they scanned him they showed themselves to him...more or less. They projected a large orange hologram of a Cybertronian historical figure that Primal would recognize; Unicron the unmaker. That was...less than comforting for the gorilla-former.

"If you've scanned me, then you know we did not come to this planet by choice," Optimus Primal tried to explain.

"And yet you are here," The Unicron hologram replied; its voice a deep ominous monotone.

"We mean no harm," Optimus assured the aliens, "To you or this planet."

"It is too late," Unicron rumbled, "You and your enemies have already contaminated the project. The harm has been done. That which does not become part of the one becomes void."

"No! Wait!" Optimus Primal pleaded, "We can fix whatever damage was done."

"We are not interested," Unicron replied dismissively, "The experiment will be sterilized."

"You can't do that!" Primal objected despite his compromising position, "There are living creatures here! You, with all your power, even you don't have the right!"

"We have no choice," The alien projection replied as it began to float away, "There is more danger than you know. Begin termination sequence."

The floating orange Unicron head then disappeared, leaving a countdown to destruction in its wake. Soon the planet and everyone on it, including the Maximals, would be destroyed.

" _Noooo_!" Optimus Primal let out a feral scream as he used every ounce of his strength to break his bonds, "Optimus Primal, Maximize!"

Now in robot mode, he had to go outside and warn the Maximals and Predacons waiting out there of the danger. They had to figure out a way to save the planet, and they didn't have much time. Every Cybertronian, every plant, and every animal was counting on them to stop this mass extinction.

* * *

With the first two sparks successfully restored, Waspinator and Bitten were working on the other two. Waspinator was connected to Terrabyte, and Bitten was connected to Phobia. She had wanted to donate part of her spark to herself, but Waspinator was too afraid to touch Phobia after he found out she was an energon leech.

Bitten was actually surprised that Predacons had any concept of energon leeches. Back on Cybertron in Bitten's era energon leeches were treated like parasites and often killed by those that didn't understand their abilities. They were called vampires, cannibals, and every other monstrous name one could think of. Due to frequently being the targets of fearful citizens, energon leeches were quite rare even in Terrabyte's day. Of course a leech _could_ drain enough energon to kill a mech, but only as an adult. Even if Phobia were awake, there was no way she could actually kill Waspinator.

It was probably for the best anyway. Bitten felt weird looking at the younger version of herself. For one thing she was only a couple feet taller, which didn't seem fair. Also, just the idea of looking at one's self is rather disturbing on a psychological level. Bitten had always seen herself in a mirror, and had never been able to see herself the way the rest of the world saw her. It looked...backwards.

Bitten took a look at Waspinator siphoning his own spark just to save her life, and she saw the Predacon in a new light. Sure, they were technically in a truce, but Bitten had no illusions that the other Predacons would kill her if given the chance. She could see that there was actually a sliver of decency in Waspinator though, and she wondered if he would someday defect like Dinobot. Then again, who said he had to? Who was to say that all Predacons were evil like Megatron? Bitten didn't know, and felt guilty about judging a situation she had yet to fully understand.

She also watched her younger self as she was unknowingly having her spark salvaged by Q-Boom's descendant. Poor innocent Terrabyte, Bitten couldn't help but think. There was a femmeling whose life was uncomplicated by feelings of love/lust, who has yet to be adopted by Sunstreaker, and who has yet to learn about just how complex life can be. Bitten envied that little cassette carrier femme.

"I am finished," Bitten announced as she closed up Phobia's chassis, "They will most likely survive long enough to be rescued now."

"Zo theze are ancients from your time?" Waspinator asked.

"Yes, they are myself and my Sigma sisters," Bitten replied.

"Zigma zizters? What iz that?" Waspinator asked curiously.

"Sigma Sisters was the name of my orphan gang," Bitten replied stoically, "We lived in Altihex, and had to rely on each other for survival. It made us very close."

"Indeed," Waspinator muttered, "If thiz iz you, then do you remember thiz inzident?" Waspinator asked intently, "Do you know what planet we're on?"

"Don't you know?" Bitten asked innocently.

"No," Waspinator admitted, "Predaconz got lozzt."

"This planet is-" Bitten started to say, but then stopped herself, "Wait. This planet has two moons."

"Zo?" Waspinator asked impatiently.

Bitten didn't reply, but rather ran outside to see if she had seen things. This planet had two moons, but the Sigmas crashed on earth, and earth only had one moon. This didn't add up. Bitten had to try to make sense of it all.

She looked up at the sky, and sure enough there were two moons. Bitten stared up at them to examine each one, to see if one looked like earth's moon. She didn't know if a planet could lose a moon and be okay, but that must've been what happened in order for this to be earth...unless it wasn't. Maybe she was wrong, and this wasn't earth at all. No, the land mass was right where she calculated it would be! This had to be earth. So why-?

The thought went unfinished as Bitten noticed a light beam shooting out of the ground and into the atmosphere. It landed on one of the moons, and suddenly the moon opened up to reveal a weapon the size of a small planetoid!

"Hoppy Bot, what'z gotten into you?" Waspinator asked as he stepped outside.

"Look," Bitten uttered softly as she helplessly pointed to the sky, "This planet will be destroyed. We are all going to die."

Waspinator gasped as he looked up at the evidence in the sky. Light swirled around it, and even the air of the planet felt like it was pulling upward. Suddenly there was an earthquake all around them, and both Cybertronians fell over and looked at each other.

"Get inside," Bitten ordered, "Tearjerker is a space shuttle, designed for harsh reentry. If this planet is destroyed, her body might be able to withstand the impact."

Waspinator then ran inside without comment, and Bitten struggled to stand up and follow him. Sure he didn't help her up, but at this point she was just grateful he left the door open for her at all.

Inside the shuttle everything rattled and anything that wasn't nailed down was falling or sliding across the floor. The unconscious bodies of the sparklings were shaking along with everything else, so Bitten positioned herself over them to protect them. Waspinator saw what she was doing and held onto Bitten so he could help steady the sparklings too. The world was crumbling all around them and all the unlikely pair could do was hope the shuttle held when the laser pierced the world.


	12. Sacrifices Must Be Made

_Author's Notes: Things really start happening now! This chapter turned out long, but it's still fast paced since I juggled three plot threads for this one. For whatever reason at the moment this is the fic I'm updating most often. I've just had so many ideas for this story that I have to write it. Anyway, for those of you who enjoy this fic I thank you for reading, and I would love to read a review from you :)_

* * *

Chapter 12

Sacrifices Must Be Made

The new transwarp crusier was finally ready, courtesy of the Tripredacus Council, and Ravage and his team would leave in search of the false Megatron and the Maximals that had hidden Project X. The mission's takeoff was already an orn late, or two weeks as the modern Cybertronians called it. Ravage felt old every time he reminded himself of how different this new generation was from him.

As he drove to the takeoff station he couldn't help but glance again at his passenger. Syphon was in the front seat bunched up so no one outside could see her. Her black leathery wings shieled the rest of her body like a blanket, but Syphon could not hide her discomfort as easily as she hid her face. There was no real reason to hide, but Syphon was terribly anxious about the outside world, almost to the point of paranoia. Ravage could tell she was shaking in her seat, and he wondered again how he let that batty femme talk him into taking her with him on this mission.

"You should look out the window," Ravage told Syphon in an effort to make conversation, "There are many beautiful sights here in Kaon. When was the last time you were in Kaon, if I may ask?"

"Sree hunded years," Syphon replied, "Da houses ah diffent."

"Yes, I would imagine most are," Ravage commented as he kept his optics on the road, "Three hundred years would change many things about the landscape. Is there anything fun you would like to do when we get back from our mission?"

"I wanna go fo' a walk," Syphon replied as her joints slowly relaxed and she slid up in her seat, "Da schity is so petty at night. Like stahs on the gound."

"Why would you walk when you can fly?" Ravage asked cheekily.

"Don' dee shilly," Syphon laughed, "I don' know how ta fly no mo'. It's den too long since I did it."

"Than you should practice while we are in deep space," Ravage replied sternly, "You have allowed your joints to rust, and you will need to be swift for this mission. These are terrorists we are pursuing, not to mention Quillbit will likely make our lives a living pit during the trip. Be careful around this Maximal. She is dangerously unstable and has not had social contact for many vorns."

"So why is she cunning wis us?" Syphon asked dubiously.

"Because Protoform X, one of our targets, has an immortal spark and is very powerful," Ravage explained, "I asked for someone else with an immortal spark to assist me on this mission. I expected a Predacon since Predacons are 4 times more likely to be born with the rare mutation than Maximals. Unfortunately only one individual on record has the power, the spark, and the inside knowledge necessary to take down Protoform X."

"Killdit," Syphon stated rather than asked.

Ravage couldn't help but smirk at how Syphon pronounced the odd name. _Killed it_ actually seemed to fit the femme better than the cutesier name Quillbit. He only hoped that the security measures installed in the space shuttle would be enough to deter that lunatic from attacking poor Syphon. Ravage still felt guilty about bringing a handicap femme along on this trip, but it wasn't exactly illegal. It probably would've been, except the idea of a Cybertronian being disabled seemed utterly ludicrous to those that had never seen cases like Syphon's.

As the dock came into view Ravage could already see the cruiser. It was big, but not too big, and had a sleek design; like a blackbird about to grab its prey. It was a fitting ship for a Predacon, and it made Ravage feel a longing for his bird cassette brothers Laserbeak and Buzzsaw. Ravage hated being the last one left of Soundwave's line.

When they parked at the dock where the ship was located Ravage saw that there were two asylum workers standing outside the shuttle talking and smoking enerjolts. He knew they were likely there for Quillbit, but he also wanted them to look over Syphon to make sure she would be okay during the flight. Syphon however didn't want to get out of the transport when she saw there were new people. She knew many Predacons made fun of her condition and she didn't want to have to deal with that.

"Syphon, you must get out," Ravage insisted, "We have to pass these mechs to get on board the ship. Do not worry. You will be fine. Do you want me to hold your servo?"

"No!" Syphon yelped, "I don' wanna endarrass you, Ra-vage. You're a samous sty."

"A what?" Ravage asked, not understanding at first.

"A samous sty, like Janes Dond," Syphon tried to explain.

It took Ravage a moment to comprehend but then he exclaimed, "Oh! A famous spy! Yes, quite the contradiction, I know. I do not mind holding your servo however if it means we leave sooner. I do not feel like disappointing the Tripredacus Council today."

"Okay," Syphon reluctantly relented.

Ravage then got out of the transport and walked around to help Syphon out as well. She was shaking like a leaf in the breeze and darting her optics back and forth to make sure there were no threats. Ravage held onto her elbow joint so she wouldn't fall over in case of a seizure, but she actually seemed to walk just fine despite how nervous she was.

"Welcome, Ravage," One of the workers, a salamander-former, greeted the panther, "The council has briefed us on your mission and everything you need. We could only get a month's supply of Quillbit's pills on such short notice, but we did manage to procure eight crates of enerjolts. They keep her from going all Devastator on your aft for a little while. Take it from me and don't let that prickly pinhead be sober during this trip, not even for a moment. She'll kill you if her processor is left to its own devices too long."

"Thish feels like a survival horror gane," Syphon whispered to Ravage, which earned a smirk from the old spy.

"Thank you for letting me know about her requirements," Ravage replied civilly despite feeling like he was being set up to fail, "Now, may I ask where _patient zero_ is at the moment?"

"She's in the brig," The second employee, a roach-former, informed him, "It has been especially designed to hold Quillbit and is located near the center of the ship so she doesn't accidentally punch a hole in the outer hull. There is also a small door installed that only opens from the outside so you can give her pills, food, and enerjolts. Do not release her until you are ready to have her hunt down Project X. Understand?"

"Perfectly," Ravage replied smoothly, "Also, could you examine Syphon to see if she is prepared for this trip?"

"Nah, we're getting ready to leave," The salamander replied as he stomped out his enerjolt and took out a bag full of caramelized bugs to eat, "We got off work early because of this little fiasco in the making, and now I'm gonna spend some of that hazard money to hit the clubs. Woohoo!"

With those words the asylum workers left, and Ravage shook his helm at how lazy and selfish younger mechs could be. With little left to lose Ravage led Syphon into the ship and examined everything before takeoff. He would have to pilot the thing until they located a trail, and then once the Axelon's or Darksyde's ion signature was found he could put the ship on autopilot.

"How dig is dis ship?" Syphon asked as she struggled to keep pace with the elderly panther.

"It has two decks. Not particularly large, but not as small as an escape ship," Ravage explained, "Most of the ship's mass is dedicated to the wings, which are used to house advanced sensors and stabilize for landings. The supplies should be sufficient for a crew of three. I called ahead to make certain there were plenty of liquids for you. I would suggest performing some physical activities in the training room to get your body acclimated for the hunt. The council's orders were clear regarding the terrorists and Maximals...no prisoners, and no witnesses."

"Yes Ra-vage," Syphon nodded compliantly.

The pair were almost to the elevator that led to the upper floor when they passed a dim room/hallway that had a large glass wall on the left side. The glass shielded the room that separated Quillbit from the other two Cybertronians. The Predacons looked at their Maximal weapon as she paced from one side of the room to the other with the pent up energy of a bull.

"We are preparing for takeoff, Quillbit," Ravage informed his fellow crew member, "Did you take your pills today?"

"Nah, I'm conservin' 'em," Quillbit replied lucidly, "We don't have a lot, and I don't know how long this stupid field trip is gonna last. Figure I'd better keep the pills in my subspace until I need 'em."

"You still have a subspace?" Ravage asked in mild surprise, "Those use up a lot of energy."

"Get crashed, Pussycat," Quillbit cursed sourly at Ravage.

"Hi Killdit, nice to neet ya!" Syphon greeted the porcupine in a friendly manner, "I hote we get along. You'll like Ra-vage. He's nice."

"What the-?" Quillbit's face grew darker as she eyed Syphon, and the Predacons were nervous at what this sudden transformation might mean.

"Ah ya okay, Killdit?" Syphon asked worriedly while Ravage put his hand on his side holster just in case.

"A _bat_?" Quillbit asked harshly, "You brought a _fraggin_ ' _bat_ on this ship? Why does the universe hate me!?"

"Ya don't like dats?" Syphon asked timidly, looking for all the world like a kicked puppy.

" _Get out_!" Quillbit roared at Syphon, "Get outta my face, you slaggin'... _rargh_!"

Quillbit became completely incoherent as she started pounding on the floor and gnashing her denta. Her spines shot out of her body and littered the wall, with new quills taking their place seconds later. Her mouth foamed with an unknown substance, and Ravage wasn't even sure if Quillbit rememebred they were there anymore.

The shift in mood was so sudden that Syphon scrambled away in fright. Before she could get to the elevator Syphon tripped on her own pedes and landed roughly on the ground. Ravage helped her up and guided her to the elevator, away from the psychotic Maximal.

* * *

The earthquakes continued to rock the planet as Bitten and Waspinator held onto each other and the ancient sparklings in their care. The dead shuttle was holding fast and keeping them safe from the worst of it, but both feared that soon everything would disintegrate around them and they would be nothing but debris.

"Wazzpinator not want to be deztroyed!" Waspinator wailed as the room shook, "Wazzpinator haz planz!"

Bitten held on tighter with her right arm around Waspinator's waist and her left arm steadying the pile of sparklings. She wanted to scream, and yet she didn't. There was an enemy next to her, yet he was her only source of comfort. Everything was so confusing for her energy-deprived processor that she simply held on and didn't make a sound.

The shaking became less intense as time went on, but there was clearly still something outside ramming into the side of the shuttle. Sensors were going crazy everywhere, so it was likely a quantum surge or some other type of post-weapon phenomenon. The pair loosened their grip on the sparklings since the room wasn't rattling anymore, but to Waspinator's shock Bitten pushed herself closer to him to hug him for support.

"Why iz Hoppy Bot hugging Wazzpinator?" Waspinator asked in disgust, "Wazzpinator iz Predacon! Wazzpinator needz no one!"

Bitten didn't let go however. She buried her faceplate into Waspinator's chassis and remained as still as a statue. Waspinator wasn't sure how to take this. He knew Maximals were soft sparked, but he had no idea they could be this weak. It was pathetic, and it made Waspinator feel awkward and unsure of himself.

"Waspinator," Bitten finally spoke after several tense minutes, "What if...we are the only ones left? What if they all died?"

"It'z pozzible," Waspinator replied indifferently, "Planet blow up, Maximalz and Predaconz blow up too."

"I should not have come inside with you," Bitten lamented, "They could all be dead. Dinobot...there was so much left unexplored."

"Hoppy Bot iz friendz with the traitor?" Waspinator asked curiously.

"We were dating," Bitten confessed, "We were not lovers, but that seemed to be the direction our relationship was going. I should have tried to find him and the other Maximals. I should have tried to save them."

"We are hourz away from the Axalon," Waspinator pointed out, "There waz no time."

"I know," Bitten admitted, "And yet...what have I done?"

"Did Dinobot know?" Waspinator asked, "How you felt?"

"I think so," Bitten replied uncertainly, "He was very smart, and very cultured. He must have known how much I loved him. I only wish I could say goodbye."

"Wazzpinator never confezzed his love," Waspinator suddenly said, "It'z for the best. Wazzpinator waz better off dreaming. Dreamz hurt lezz than reality."

As Waspinator said this he rubbed his helm, likely due to a ghost pain from what he had vaguely described. Bitten smiled despite her usual stoic nature. It seemed over the past few months Bitten had found more reasons to smile. Her animals, her Maximal friends, Dinobot...

Bitten's smile faltered when she realized everything she loved was likely gone now. No more clinic, no more Maximals, no more Dinobot...no more anything. Her sisters lived, as did Waspinator, but did anything else survive?

"Who was she?" Bitten asked to take her mind off her wayward thoughts, "The one you admired?"

"That'z not important," Waspinator replied dejectedly, "She hated Wazzpinator."

"You can tell me," Bitten assured him, "I don't mind. Besides, if we are truly alone now, then who could I tell your secret to?"

Waspinator seemed to consider this point for a while. After a few more seconds of silence Bitten finally heard the buzzing mech utter a name...

"Blackarachnia."

* * *

In the Tripredicus Council chambers the leaders of the Predacon underclass watched on the screen as Ravage's ship took off in search of that lunatic Megatron and his fellow traitors. Everything was going according to plan, and soon they would be rid of every problem on their current agenda.

Surefire turned to his fellow rulers, Razorclaw and Payload, and brought up a hologram of two golden disks.

"I cannot believe how well the Maximals hid these historical records," Surefire commented as information scrolled down the image, "If it would net us an advantage I would almost forgive that daffy purple dinosaur."

"The Maximal elders have indeed kept the truth about the Great War a secret from our kind for far too long," Razorclaw agreed.

"It's worse than that," Payload added, "They also keep these secrets from their own people. If only we could have actually allowed Ravage to return with the items..."

"The planet is safer with the disks hidden or destroyed," Surefire assured his comrades, "I only regret the loss of our best spy. Ravage was one of the only ones left alive who remembers the Great War. His skills and tenacity are unmatched among modern Predacons. Unfortunately some sacrifices have to be made. So, did everything go according to plan?"

"Of course," Payload confirmed, "I had my mechs limit the supply of medication on board the vessel and the enerjolts contain a steroid that activates when it comes into contact with a terrestrial atmosphere high in nitrogen. As soon as Quillbit is finished killing the targets, she'll lose herself to the bloodlust and kill Ravage as well. _No witnesses_."

"Perfect," Surefire replied, though without the conviction that word normally entailed.

Surefire hated setting Ravage up like that. He felt like he was a Quintesson feeding an innocent to a tank of ravenous Sharkticons. He knew Quillbit could not be contained once released out into the wild. He knew Ravage would die. It didn't matter though. Ravage knew of their plans to kill Megatron, the Maximals, and if possible Protoform X. They couldn't allow him to survive and possibly tell his story to the Maximal Elders. No matter how shady he felt, Surefire knew planting that crazed immortal spark in with Ravage was the only option.

* * *

The earthquakes continued to shake the ground, and it felt as if the unstable precipice where the Axalon was situated would soon give way; causing the ship to fall into the chasm. That was the least of Optimus Primal's worries however. The crew had just captured Blackarachnia after she and a couple other Predacons had knocked out Rhinox and Dinobot. The alien weapon would soon bear down on the planet, and Primal had an idea to stop it. Unfortunately his crew didn't seem as keen on the idea as he was.

"A trans-warp explosion!?" Rattrap repeated Primal's notion; a look of terrified shock on his face.

Everyone looked at Primal as if he were crazy. That kind of firepower might stop the cannon, however...

" _Hahahaha_! You'll blow yourself to _atoms_!" Blackarachnia laughed hysterically.

"If it saves this planet it'll be worth it," Optimus replied with conviction, "And if it doesn't...I'm no worse off. Either way it's the only chance any of us have right now."

Blackarachnia seemed ready to retort whatever Primal said to her, but once the words and their implication sunk in the vitriol died in her mouth. She took a few long seconds to think about the pros and cons of aiding the enemy. Finally she realized that saving the planet meant saving herself as well.

"Unhand me, Pussycats," Blackarachnia snapped at Tigatron and Cheetor, who had been holding her back from harming the others, "I've got work to do."

The spider sauntered over to a stasis pod in self-satisfaction at her skills being so suddenly valued by the Maximals. It was annoying, but the fact was they really did need her at the moment. Tarantulas had programmed that stasis pod to leave the planet when he realized everything was going to blow, and the only one besides Tarantulas who knew how the technology worked was Blackarachnia.

As Blackarachnia worked on the vessel that would most likely send Optimus Primal to his doom the crew grew more restless. It didn't take long before Cheetor couldn't take it anymore and had to speak up.

"Don't do this, Big Bot!" Cheetor pleaded, "I'll fly the ship!"

"No! Let me!" Tigatron intervened, "I owe this world."

"I'm grateful," Optimus replied sympathetically, "But a flier is the only one who has a chance of getting clear of the blast."

"Exactly why I should be the one to go," Airazor jumped at the chance to save Optimus from potentially killing himself.

Optimus didn't reply to her since he knew she had a point, but he wanted a way to avoid sacrificing another crewmember's life. Then he remembered his most reliable friend, ally, and distraction.

"What about you, Rattrap?" Optimus asked when he didn't volunteer like the others.

"Hey, suicide ain't in my job description," Rattrap scoffed at the very notion, as Optimus knew he would.

"Or mine," Optimus assured him and everyone else, "Now start rigging an auto charge in that trans-warp cell. I'll need about 30 nano kliks to clear the ship."

"You got it," Rattrap replied before immediately heading off to do the task provided to him.

Everyone else seemed somewhat satisfied with the plan now and watched as Blackarachnia worked to make the stasis pod flight worthy. Optimus couldn't help but smile to himself. Whenever he was in a jam he could always count on Rattrap's wit and dark humor to throw everyone off-guard and lighten the mood. It had been that way since they were sparklings, and even now with the fate of the world relying on Optimus the ape still counted on Rattrap to look out for him.

* * *

Bitten and Waspinator had managed to get past the fear of potential death after a few hours in the shuttle. The earthquakes were still rattling the ground and it was still too dangerous to try to stand up or move to another part of the ship, but being around danger for so long somehow took the sting out of it.

"And that'z how Wazzpinator failed heavy armor mobility training in the third grade," Waspinator finished his latest anecdote.

Bitten was finding that when Waspinator felt like someone was listening to him that he loved to talk. His prattling was a little hard to follow with his buzzy accent, but Bitten didn't have the spark to be annoyed by him. He was just nervous and trying to keep his processor occupied. When Bitten got nervous she clammed up, but she understood that some people talked a lot when anxious.

"Hoppy Bot?" Waspinator called Bitten's wandering mind back to the present, "Can I azk you a quezztion?"

"What is it, Waspinator?" Bitten asked patiently.

"What waz Mommy Bot like?" Waspinator asked somberly, "There are zo few recordz of the war timez. No one knowz much about it exzept the onez who lived through it. Waz Mommy Bot ztrong? Talented? Zmart?"

"Q-Boom was a femme of many contradictions," Bitten explained as neutrally as she could manage, "She didn't believe in overthinking things, yet there were times she would say something deep without meaning to. She claimed to not want to be smart, yet she took the first chance she had to be adopted by an engineer and learn his ways. She was reckless, but only because she knew she could heal whenever she broke. She pushed people away, yet she couldn't stand to be alone. In many ways, she was an inversion of myself. She was outgoing, friendly, playful, rude, and energetic. She also feared deep connections."

"Why waz that?" Waspinator asked.

"Her father lost his trine before she was born," Bitten explained, "It drove him crazy with grief. Q-Boom wanted friends, and she wanted family, but she was afraid to love anyone the way her father loved his brothers. She swore she would never trine and never mate. She hated the idea of intimacy."

"Recordz zay she had a zparkmate," Waspinator informed Bitten, "Hizz name waz Cozmoz."

"He was a member of the Ark crew," Bitten recalled, "I never spoke to him. He was gone most of the time. I am surprised. Saucer-formers and seekers were enemies in the early days of the war. The seekers nearly killed all of them."

"Wazzpinator didn't know that," Waspinator replied softly as he looked at the ground in front of him, "Maximalz keep zecretz from everyone. Old Predaconz like Wazzpinator remember Decepticonz, but never zaw them in their glory dayz. Wazzpinator juzt wantz to know about..."

"About?" Bitten prodded.

"Family," Waspinator sighed wearily, "Why did Mommy Bot not want Wazzpinator? Why waz Wazzpinator raized in military camp? Why early Predaconz only raized by soldierz? Why doez the world belong to Maximalz? Why univerze hate Wazzpinator?!"

Bitten could see Waspinator was spiraling into a depression, but she didn't know how to help him. She didn't know Q-Boom as an adult for very long, and therefore didn't know what led to things like Q-Boom bonding to Cosmos or giving up her beast frame sparklings. Did Q-Boom really not care about them? Bitten would like to think that wasn't true, but then what other explanation could there be? Perhaps Q-Boom had grown tired of the project she and Honey Venom started together.

* * *

"In you go," Blackarachnia said as she held the door to the pod open for Primal to climb in.

Optimus situated himself into the stasis pod carefully. It was small for him in his robot mode, but he would only have to be in the claustrophobic space long enough to discharge the explosive. The crew still looked concerned for his safety, and the tension could be cut with a vibroblade.

"Cozy," Primal remarked in an effort to lighten the mood.

"Just like a coffin," Blackarachnia quipped, preferring the more harmful side of dark humor.

Cheetor growled viciously at the Predacon, tired of her sass and not wanting to think about their leader dying. She stared him down, and his growing only grew louder as he bared his teeth at the evil femme. Blackarachnia was the first one to look away from the stare down, and decided instead to turn her attention back to Primal.

"You realize this is crazy," Blackarachnia commented.

"Sometimes crazy works," Optimus retorted, but then in a more sincere voice said, "Thanks for your help."

"Hmph, better you than me," Blackarachnia muttered dismissively.

The spider then got to work on the controls of the pod, but before it could close the crew decided to say their parting words.

"Be careful, Optimus," Airazor said sorrowfully, "Come back to us."

"May the matrix protect your spark for all eternity," Tigatron added solemnly.

Cheetor couldn't say anything in his worry. He could only shake his helm and wish he was going in Optimus's place so the mech he looked up to wouldn't have to risk his life for them.

"Hey, uh, just in case you don't come back..." Rattrap stammered, "Can I have your quarters?"

Everyone else gave Rattrap the stink optic for that insensitive request, but Optimus just smiled and tried not to laugh. Leave it to his oldest friend to know just what to say to calm his nerves.

"Whatever happens," Optimus said with a grateful smile, "I just want you to know you're the finest crew I've ever had the honor of serving with."

Everyone looked like they were about to cry, with the exceptions of Rattrap and-

" _Ugh_! Do Maximals _always_ talk such _slop_!?" Blackarachnia mocked the concerned group for their grief.

Airazor's inelegant reply was to punch the Predacon square in the faceplate; knocking Blackarachnia unconscious.

"My sentiments exactly," Rattrap said with a satisfied smirk.

The pod door closed then, and soon Optimus was jettisoned into the air heading for the stratosphere. The pod travelled fast. It was clear Tarantulas was planning on making a very quick getaway in this thing. Optimus just hoped it would be fast enough to stop the alien cannon from turning the planet to rubble.

Optimus checked his readings again and pressed a few buttons to alter his speed of acceleration. There didn't seem to be any defenses around the weapon, which was strange but also spoke to the cockiness of the alien species.

Soon the weapon was within range and Optimus was ready to plant the trans-warp explosives. He would barely have enough time to fly out of the pod, plant the bomb, and fly back to the pod to drive it back to the Axalon. It was a risky plan, but if all went according to plan he would come back in one piece and save the lives of countless species.

"Alien construct within range," The computer droned in a pleasant monotone that did not fit the tense situation.

"Let's do it," Primal replied to the lifeless machine, "Commence ignition sequence."

"Commencing," The computer replied, "Ignition sequence will activate in 60 nano kliks."

"Prepare to blow pod hatch," Primal commanded.

"Unable to comply," The computer replied, "Pod hatch is magna-sealed."

"That's impossible," Primal argued with the computer.

Primal then started trying to pull the handle that would release the door to the stasis pod, all without success. Optimus got a sickening feeling in the pit of his fuel tank. If he couldn't get the ship to comply with his orders then he wouldn't be able to escape the imminent explosion. If the ship's controls didn't work at all that would also mean he was on a collision course with the super weapon!

His sickening feeling grew a hundred fold when a disturbingly familiar face projected itself on the ship's screen. It was none other than Megatron, wearing a grin that was utterly sadistic.

"How ironic that you and I hit on the same idea to save the planet from destruction," Megatron taunted Optimus in a purposefully casual manner, "Unfortunately in my version the pilot goes _down_ , or should I say _up_ , with the ship."

The proximity alarm chose that moment to beep at Primal, as if the warning sound was punctuating Megatron's words. Optimus tried to fix the pod hatch, tried to correct course, tried to steer the ship...nothing was working! The moon-sized weapon was getting closer, and the countdown kept ticking away. Optimus was trapped inside, what Blackarachnia had so aptly described, as his coffin.

"Oh, you Optimuses do love to sacrifice yourselves, don't you?" Megatron goaded, "Unfortunately this time your foolishness will doom both you and your little Maximals. The Beast Wars are over, Optimus! You. Lose."

Megatron then laughed as maniacally as he ever had, and the countdown clock reached the last ten seconds of countdown.

10

"No!" Optimus cried out in vain as he tried to free himself.

9

"NOOOOO!"

7

Megatron continued to laugh at Primal's desperate struggle.

5

Optimus realized there was no way out.

4

" **MEGATROOOOOON**!" Optimus roared at the top of his lungs in rage.

3

2

1

The pod crashed into the weapon in a hail of fireworks and debris. The quantum surge shook the planet below, and up above anyone that would have looked would have seen bright red sparks lighting up the gloomy early evening sky. The planet was finally safe from destruction, but it would be up to the Maximals to figure out how to pick up the pieces.


	13. Crippling Thoughts

_Author's Notes: This chapter was supposed to be longer, but the way things were flowing it made more sense to end it where I did. I'm still not sure this chapter is that great, but I did the best I could at the moment. I'm just glad I've been able to update this fic on a semi-regular basis lately. It's not my most popular story, but it isn't my least, so that's something. Thank you to everyone who reads, follows, and/or reviews this story. You guys keep me going with these fics :)_

* * *

Chapter 13

Crippling Thoughts

It was several hours before Bitten and Waspinator felt safe enough to leave the shuttle, but once everything had cooled down they both felt it was best to go their separate ways. Waspinator didn't feel like getting slagged by Maximals, and Bitten didn't feel ready to face Megatron or his goons. Both had been emotionally vulnerable inside the shuttle, but once they parted ways it was the unspoken agreement that they would mutually pretend this moment never happened.

Bitten's hop home had been frantic. She worried about leaving Tigatron alone in the Darksyde, and she worried about whether or not the earthquakes had caused any permanent damage to the Axalon. Most of all though, her processor was beside itself with worry over Dinobot.

Bitten tried to convince herself that this worry was ridiculous. Dinobot was among the most capable mechs on board the ship. If the Predacons attacked the Maximals Dinobot would be the most qualified to fend them off. Unfortunately this wasn't a mere Predacon ambush. This was a disaster on a planetary scale, and even Dinobot could not stand up to the forces of gravity and wreckage itself. Bitten hopped faster to get to the ship to find out if Dinobot and the other Maximals were okay. She had to look after her-

Her what? Bitten wasn't even sure what to call what she and Dinobot were. Yes, they spent a lot of time together, they made out once, and they shared a mutual attraction, but neither one had actually come right out and _said_ they were in a relationship. Bitten would definitely call a committed couple a relationship, but were they a couple? Did Dinobot want that, or was he only humoring her? Do Predacons even spark bond in the same way ancient Cybertronians did? What about interfacing? Bitten had no experience with that, and she had never asked Dinobot about his sexual history. Did he have a virus she should know about? A secret family back on Cybertron?

Bitten tried to push this downward spiral of thoughts out of her processor. They were pointless musings if Dinobot turned out to be injured or dead. Bitten found herself surprised to be more mortified by the idea of Dinobot having a family than the thought of Dinobot being dead. His death should have made her feel worse and she knew it. Problem was Bitten had already seen a lot of death in her life, and her broken psyche was oddly used to the idea.

When Bitten made it as far as the mountain one of her fears was confirmed. The mountain had crumbled under the pressure of the earth shaking itself loose, and the ship was at the bottom of the canyon. Bitten hung her helm tiredly, realizing she would have to climb down. She only had one servo, so that was going to make the job even harder. It was times like these she envied fliers.

* * *

The Laser-Saw, as Ravage designated his ship, tracked the area of space around them for any signs of ion signatures that could lead to the transwarp wormhole. The job was a lot more boring than TV would have one believe.

Ravage had the scanner on auto-detect and was currently in recharge while Syphon kept watch on the monitor just in case they found something. Despite the lack of excitement this was still the most stimulating adventure Syphon had partaken in since her sparkmate disappeared into deep space. Her wings twitched every now and then as she logged in the search results every few minutes. According to the chronometer, they had been in space for nearly half an orn, or 6.5 days.

It had also been 2 days since anyone had gone below deck to check on Quillbit. She was refusing to take her pills and the crew needed to conserve food, so no one had gone down there to feed her in the hope that starving her a little would make her more cooperative to taking her pills. That had been Ravage's idea, and while Syphon didn't like to go against the powerful cat she still felt guilty about making Quillbit suffer.

After logging their lack of progress for the 26th time that joor, Syphon finally got an idea. She could locate some pills, hide them in Quillbit's food, and then trick the prickly porcupine into eating them. Syphon was probably one of only a very few 'Bots who understood how to take pills since she had so many issues of her own, so she felt stupid for not having thought of this sooner.

Syphon found some bananas and dried crickets to smash into a...well, a mush. There was no other word for it than mush. She then took a couple antipsychotic pills and used her thumb to push them into the ugly mess of old fruit and dried bugs. It was a favorite of Syphon's, and she hoped that Quillbit would like it as well.

When Syphon made it to the dimly lit hallway and looked in the holding cell she saw that Quillbit was already drinking something, and it wasn't from a container that Syphon recognized.

"What duh-?" Syphon asked incredulously, "Where did ya get dat drink?"

"It ain't a drink, it's soup," Quillbit corrected her, "It tastes like regurgitated slag, but at least it's safe to eat. They give this stuff to the patients at the Flatline Asylum. I just saved it in my subspace for a while durin' periods when I didn't feel like eatin'."

"Dut I drought you dis," Syphon replied dejectedly as she showed Quillbit the mush, "I nade it just fo' you."

"It looks like roadkill," Quillbit groused, "Put it through the slot."

"Ya gonna eat it?" Syphon asked suspiciously, "Or tho it at nee?"

"How could I throw it at you if you're on the other side of the glass, glitch?" Quillbit pointed out as she crossed her arms over her chassis, "Just give me the slaggin' food!"

Syphon pouted angrily at Quillbit, but still did as she was asked. The old bat-former shuffled slowly to the slender slot in the wall where they were supposed to give the crazy Maximal her food and medicine. Little did Quillbit know that Syphon was going to give her both.

Quillbit took the food, sniffed it, and snorted as if the meal was a clever joke.

"Slaggin' bat," Quillbit muttered with a crooked smile that held no good cheer.

Syphon waited to see if Quillbit would actually eat it, hoping the Maximal would take her anti-crazy pills and stop trying to bust a hole through her confinement. Quillbit tasted the food, smiled, and then started eating in earnest. Syphon breathed a small sigh of relief and then smiled at the patient in turn.

"This is pretty good slop," Quillbit commented.

"Sank you, Killbit," Syphon beamed, happy for even a tiny complement from any source; even such a hateful one.

"Yeah, this is great," Quillbit continued airily, "Everythin' just _works_ in this recipe. The sweetness of the bananas, the crunchiness of the crickets, and the bitter metallic taste of the pills. It all just really comes together."

"You _tasted_ dat!?" Syphon asked in shock, "An I in troudle?"

"How could you be?" Quillbit smirked wryly, "You're out there, and I'm in here. Of course, I could be out there given enough time. I'm wearin' down this wall, and soon I'll be free of you fraggers. Hope you can explain that one to Pussycat, Batsy."

"Dat goes into deep stace," Syphon warned, "Ya knock that down, and ya end ut floating out into nowhere."

"I can handle that," Quillbit replied nonchalantly, "I like space, actually. Space is quiet, space is free, and I could float aimlessly until I go into stasis lock and the cold feeling merges into nothingness. I could be one with the universe, instead of one with the fraggin' B team out on a pointless mission to nab a few random Preds. You got any salt for this pill food? The bananas are kinda sweet."

"Do you hate nee?" Syphon asked point blank, "I know you don't wanna dee here, dut do ya also hate nee fo' sone reason?"

"Hm...Do I hate you?" Quillbit pretended to ponder as she watched Syphon squirm under her unwavering scrutiny, "Let me see...You're a Predacon, you're a _bat_ , and you talk funny. My mood changes every few breems, but for this moment, I actually kinda like you. Pussycat forgets I exist so he can go watch the stars go by, but you actually care enough to come down here and feed me. Now, hidin' the pills in my food is a little annoyin', but the nurses do that all the time so I'm used to it. I dunno. I guess I just don't like to hang out with bats, but that ain't your fault. You just picked a stupid, stupid alt mode. You know most bats are Maximals, right?"

"I know," Syphon replied shamefully, "I can't change it."

"Why not?" Quillbit asked curiously.

"Dotched surgery," Syphon admitted as she tried to make herself look as small as she could, "Dat's why ny nouth doesn't close. Dat's why I has troudle eating and talking. I was a convert. I used ta dee a Decetacon. Now I'n a Tredacon."

"Yeah, them smaller bodies can really mess you up, especially if you used to be real big," Quillbit nodded empathetically, "That's why so many mechs, especially former 'Cons, fought against the change. Then again some 'Cons got the surgery just so they could change their names and hide from their war crimes. Was that what happened to you?"

"It was...nore conplicated dan dat," Syphon answered vaguely.

"If it helps...I was a convert, too," Quillbit confessed.

" _Really_?" Syphon gasped, "Is dat why you're so crazy?"

"Heh, it's more complicated than that," Quillbit echoed Syphon's words, "I guess you could say it's a factor though. You know, normally I can't talk to someone this long without Hulkin' out. I guess I should enjoy my sanity candy while it lasts. Thanks, Batsy."

"You're welcone," Syphon smiled, "I see you tonorrow, okay?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever," Quillbit tried to sound dismissive, but she smiled regardless.

Syphon walked back to the elevator feeling like she had accomplished something, no matter how small it seemed. Quillbit was talking like a normal femme, even if she still seemed aloof and apathetic to their mission. Syphon hoped it stayed this way. Even though Quillbit was mean, for some reason Syphon still really wanted the mental patient to like her. Syphon didn't have any other friends besides her brother-in-law Ravage, so she didn't want to let this opportunity slip by her.

* * *

Bitten was halfway down the mountain when she heard shots being fired. She ventured a look down despite being precariously perched on a ledge, and saw that the Predacons were attacking the Maximals. There weren't many Preds; just Megatron, Inferno, Blackarachnia, and Waspinator. Bitten was a little peeved that Waspinator not only made it back to his own base before she made it to hers, but he flew to the Axalon in that time as well. Fliers had all the perks.

Bitten knew she should assist her teammates, but she wasn't exactly in a position to do that just yet. She took a deep intake of air and steeled herself for the rest of the climb down. She knew she could be shot from this angle. She was a sitting duck, but it wasn't exactly like she had done this to herself on purpose. With patient determination she continued to climb.

More shots were fired, and at one point Bitten was sure she heard Cheetor scream. She didn't want to think about what that could mean for the youthful Maximal, but it was becoming harder for her to move due to the stress of worrying about her friends. It reminded her too much of the Third Cybertronian War. It made her feel like a sparkling again, and not in a good way.

Her body was frozen, and her processor was trapped in the past...

 _Terrabyte and her parents were going to go dancing that night to celebrate the Decepticons taking over Altihex and gaining control of the twin energon rivers. The cassettes were likewise excited and could barely contain themselves within Zetabyte's tape deck. Terrabyte held her sire's servo, and the older boat-former smiled down at his sweet little sparkling. She could feel the emotions of her cassette siblings' sparks, and it seemed that for once her family would get to have some fun and not worry about Autobots. Unfortunately everything was about to come crashing down._

 _Suddenly there was a shot fired, and the ground in front of them exploded into tiny little pieces. Amidst the rubble of destroyed Autobot buildings, two large Autobot soldiers came out and charged at the Decepticon family!_

 _Zetabyte, thinking quickly, pushed Terrabyte under some fallen metal and gave her the three cassettes to keep safe. Then the battle between the two Autobots and two Decepticons began in earnest._

 _It wasn't much of a fight. The red Autobot used pile drivers to crush her sire's chest plate and helm, killing him almost instantly. The yellow Autobot ripped open her carrier's tape deck door and pulled out a mess of wires inside. He had also pulled out and crushed her spark chamber, and Terrabyte saw her carrier's optics grow dark. Terrabyte and the cassettes could feel the connection being severed between their sparks and the sparks of their dead parents. In a few short seconds everything had been taken from Terrabyte._

 _She knew she should remain hidden with her_ _cassette_ _siblings_ , _but_ _those oversized brutes killed her parents. They owed her for what they did to her family, and despite only being a vorn old she was going to collect that debt._

 _Terrabyte ran from her hiding place and straight toward the red Autobot. She used her sonic scream attack to disable the pile driving menace with the full intent of breaking his processor. The Autobot went down quickly, and Terrabyte was sure she was winning, but she forgot about the yellow Autobot._

 _Suddenly Terrabyte felt herself being lifted up by the throat, unable to continue her attack and unable to scream. The golden colored demon then crushed her voice box and wrapped his large gunmetal hands around her waist. He began to crush her fragile sparkling body, and she couldn't even call for help. It wasn't long before Terrabyte passed out; the last sight she saw being those cold blue optics..._

"...Bitten!" A voice called up to her.

Bitten was too distressed and too caught up in her memories to notice the voice calling out to her. She clung to the cliff face automatically and screamed as if her very spark depended on it.

"Bitten! It's just us!" Cheetor yelled up at the frightened femme, "What do we do, Rattrap? She can't hear us."

"Oh for bootin' up cold!" Rattrap groused, "Get Chopperface out here! Maybe he knows how to deal with that kooky kangaroo."

Cheetor did as asked and soon Dinobot was outside with the others looking up at Bitten hanging on like a cat stuck up a tree. She still wasn't aware of them or the fact that the fight had ended and the Predacons were gone.

"Bitten!" Dinobot yelled, "The fight is over! Get down here!"

Bitten's mental shield broke when her ears picked up on Dinobot's call. His voice brought her out of her miserable memories in a way that nothing else could. She looked down to see Dinobot was there with two other Maximals, but she didn't recognize them. One was short and silvery colored with shiny maroon accents and large shoulder wheels. The other was taller, blue-green with shiny yellow-spotted alloy on his torso and limbs.

"Can you climb down?" The spotted Maximal asked (he sounded just like Cheetor).

"Eventually," Bitten replied without raising her voice.

"WHAT?" Cheetor yelled up, not hearing her answer.

"Eventually," Bitten repeated in the exact same tone.

"Could you speak up?" Cheetor asked, "I can't hear you."

"I ain't so sure she _can_ speak up," The silver Maximal (Rattrap) quipped.

Bitten wasn't sure what happened to Rattrap and Cheetor in such a short amount of time, but she would recognize those voices anwhere. It had to be them.

"Rrgh, just jump!" Dinobot snapped in frustration, "I'll catch you!"

Bitten didn't reply, but she was hesitant to let go. If she fell she would break into tiny pieces. To be fair Waspinator survived such injuries all the time, but he was designed to be breakable. Bitten wasn't so sure if that technology existed in her body or not, and she wasn't too keen on finding out. On the other servo, she trusted Dinobot's reflexes and intentions. If he said he would catch her, then he would probably catch her.

Making up her mind, Bitten jumped down from her ledge. Dinobot however had waited two minutes without her jumping and didn't realize she was going to. Cheetor noticed first, and quickly yelled "Dinobot! Catch Bitten!"

The three Maximals then ran around trying to catch the falling kangaroo, only for Bitten to fall on Rattrap and cause the transmetal rat to fall to the ground with a thud.

"Ow!" Rattrap complained, "Get offa me, ya stinkin' glitch!"

"Language," Bitten admonished Rattrap as she gracefully lifted herself off the mech.

"Bitten! Where have you _been_!?" Dinobot snarled angrily once it was clear she was fine, "You never reported in to Tigatron and were not on board the ship when the cataclysm almost took place! I had assumed you had perished. Now, explain yourself!"

"Waspinator owed me a favor," Bitten replied without shame, "I collected the debt. I apologize for not reporting in, but the Predacons would have caught on to us."

"Wait, you actually got _Waspinator_ to give you something?" Cheetor asked incredulously, "What did you ask for? Was it intel? Tech? Weapons? What?"

"A ride," Bitten replied, to the disappointment of the others.

"Grr, seriously? You do understand you could have been killed?" Dinobot reminded her, "Predacons are _dangerous_! If Waspinator found any weaknesses in you he could report them to Megatron! Are you trying to become a liability?"

"Everyone almost died," Bitten pointed out, "I am not special. Neither are you. I am glad you are okay, but don't yell at me just because my priorities are different than yours. I am a veterinarian, not a soldier."

"Uh, speaking of which," Cheetor reluctantly interrupted, "About your sanctuary..."

Bitten's optics widened suddenly as her helm slowly turned toward the ship. She knew the ship had fallen due to the earthquakes, but she had not considered the animal hospital's location. It would have fallen first, which meant...

"I'm sorry Bitten, but the sanctuary was crushed," Cheetor informed her, a sad expression on his face, "The only animal that made it out was Metronome, and we haven't seen him since he flew away."

Bitten found herself drawn to the spot where her beloved patients had been buried alive. When she got to the spot she knealt down and stared at the ground mournfully.

"Forget the animals, we've got a bigger problem!" Rattrap announced, "Bitten, you weren't here for this, so it might come as a shock, but Boss Monkey...bit the big one. He's...he's gone."

"Worse yet, the rodent is in command," Dinobot growled under his breath, "Blasted Maximals. If we settled this the Predacon way then _I_ would be in charge."

"Yeah, or Rhinox," Rattrap snorted, "He held Dinobot up by his neck cables, ha!"

Bitten stared at Rattrap for a moment after he said that, but it wasn't the normal intense stare the others were used to. Bitten looked hurt, but Rattrap wasn't sure why. He wondered if it was the animals or if he had offended her somehow.

"Hey come on, Bitten. It was funny," Rattrap defended himself with an awkward smile, "You know Rhinox never goes off the handle like that, and then to see Bronto-Brain hangin' like that with his legs danglin'. It was funny."

Bitten didn't reply to that. She just turned around and walked toward the ship without a word. Rattrap wasn't sure what was wrong, but he was sure he saw Bitten grab the front of her own neck with her servo as she walked away.


End file.
